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Feb
17
BeakGeek Basics
BeakGeek is a citizen science project that is researching simple tech/sensors that can integrate with web apps and social media to improve data collection.
I am going to give a quick presentation to the Fort Collins Internet Professionals this week so put together a few slides. BeakGeek is still very young but we are making some progress.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| beakgeek.pdf | 4.83 MB |
- Project:
Comments
New Cameras Inbound
Just ordered some wireless network cameras with email/ftp on motion feature. Could be a great way to simplify this architecture if they work. Also makes it more realistic to solar power without spending a small fortune. More soon.
Possible Network Camera
It looks like the Linksys Wireless-G Camera (WVC54GCA) may be a suitable camera for basic needs. It was drawing about 3 watts during testing and supports email on motion detection. Does not support timed operation of anything other than motion sensor, so will need to add an on/off timer if we are going to use it with solar. Too soon to tell how it will hold up to daily power cycles. It will need to go into a PVC enclosure; need to take it a part anyway to see if I can add a better antenna.
More soon.
Coby
Needs Upgradable Antenna
Took the Linksys apart and the built in antenna is soldered to board. I was hoping it would have an sma connector or some other easy way to hack it - nope. Still works well, but have a Trendnet Cam coming that looks like it may have the required features plus a removable antenna (and it's cheaper). I really need to be able to put a panel/directional antenna on the cam to increase range from AP. If I have to I could increase range of AP, but not sure that is something people want to do.
More soon.
Coby
BeakGeek thoughts and feedback
Great concept Coby!
How will identifications be made? Does the birder with the camera or online or both groups make the ID?
How do you see this working without feeders or with raptors? For example, when Sue sets up feeders, eventually we get some hawks coming by for lunch about three times a week.
This will be awesome and I could even see it being used to track flocks and used to identify origins of disease and support prophylactic treatment (focused immunizations, etc.) for certain diseases that could be deadly to humans or agriculture industries.
Keep up the awesome work!
Preston
Crowdsourced ID
Preston,
Thanks for the feedback and glad you like it! I was getting some good pics from the new camera today, so uploaded a few samples.
ID could be handled in a variety of ways, but I imagine if we end up using services like Flickr and/or Picasa then we could let people tag with ID as required. But I think to be most helpful we will need to support some controlled vocabulary as well.
Right now I am staging the photos on the local server until I get confident about the motion sensor settings. I already had a runaway sensor with the first camera and ended up with 800 emails in an hour - all garbage:-) It's looking much better now with the new camera setup - much less noise provides a better base for the sensor.
Yes, this is feeder-centric right now, but could easily be adapted for nests or to monitor wildlife on a game trail. It's tough to scale this model outside of a limited area since the camera's and sensors are static. A more expensive network camera would have a patrol feature with pan, tilt, zoom but the camera is too expensive for this application.
For general bird watching I am playing with the idea of using a simple syntax with microblogging services like Plodt does with Twitter. So you could report your sightings easily with SMS/Mobiles etc. Also need better locative support with GPS devices. In general, you could tweet about your bird sightings with a simple syntax and I can pull it from the Twitter stream and mash it up on beakgeek.
Regards,
Coby
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