Luxary Electronic Bird House

OK, so after having so much success with the last birdhouse (see foto's), we decided we wanted more!

The idea was born to have a second birdhouse, but with a (night vision) camera installed. I thought, well if we have a camera, then why not measure the;

• number of times the birds enter/leave (ir light sensor)
• humidity in the birdhouse (info here)
• temperature in the birdhouse (info here)
• force on the bottom of the birdhouse (very experimental! info on the sensor here)
• temperature outside the birdhouse (info here)

And to make it more of a challenge, why not do it all 'remote', so wireless over the Internet and be able to view it in Internet Explorer! OK, mmmmm.....

Below the components I used (ex the force sensor that was added at the last minute):

So above a "mockup" of most of the major components. On the bottom you can see the Velleman IR detector. I needed to 'shield' one
of the IR diodes because the sensitivity was to great, so I covered it with shrinking tube (black 'pipe' on bottom left pcb).

Here a photo of the birdhouse fitted with the in/out infrared led's and outside temperature sensor
(wires on the left-top) inside temperature and humidity sensors (wires in the middle) and bottom
force sensor (wires on the bottom). I made a Plexiglass shield/box where all the electronics will be fitted
and hence hopefully be protected from the elements.

Above a photo of the outside temperature sensor. I mounted this one in a plastic box to
shield it from the weather. Later I realised that without any "vents" the temperature in the
box would stay 'higher' than the actual outside temperature. Need to correct this later....

Here a photo of the force resistor I bought at CoolComponents. This is much more a
test than reality, because the sensor is not very accurate, and as we know birds do not
weigh much!! But I thought it would be nice to see if any weight would be measured during
the nest building, and raising of the 'chicks'.

This is a picture of the inside temperature an humidity sensor glued into
a plastic container (on the left). On the bottom you can see the force
sensor I added at the 'last' minute. Here the same problem as the outside
temperature sensor: I realised that without any "vents" the temperature in the
box would stay 'higher' than the actual inside temperature. Need to correct this later....

OK, so kids - do not try the following at home!!

O bought the ipCam that I wanted to use from eBay. See picture below;

So after playing with it out of the box, I stripped the ipCam to only its optics (ir camera and led's) and wireless electronics for the WiFi connection.

Above a photo of the infrared camera housing and led's.

And here above the ipCam electronics fitted into a plastic box and made water thigh with some silicone.

Above all major components installed.

And wired up...

And here above the final product. As I am using a 12V power supply, I needed to reduce it
to 5V for the ipCam. The Arduino board has it's own converter. The converter (7805) is
mounted outside the birdhouse on the bottom right (with cooling ribs).

Now only need to find tenants!!

29-05-2011: at the current date I am able to receive all the data and save it into my SQL database
I have @ my GoDaddy account somewhere in the states.

Below some output from the birdhouse, that is saved every 10seconds in the database:

As you can see, we have had some birds (??) being curious - 914 in/outs, but no new tenants.

BTW: the abbreviation BBIWY stands for Big Bird Is Watching You!

See below the SQL database table. Currently we have 44089 entries, one entry worth of data approx. every 10 seconds.

Later I will make the data real-time available on this page.

Happy watching!

Stephen