My Naturewatch Camera Part 3: It’s Alive!

It’s here! The Pi Zero Mini Camera arrived and…it’s tiny! I know that seems obvious based on the name, but I really was surprised. Can this thing even take decent pictures?

Pi Zero Mini Camera (top) vs. the Camera Module 3 (bottom) vs. uh I forgot to put anything for scale

With no time to waste, I swapped the new camera out and pulled up my old friend the error screen. I hit reload and…

I added a gnome since the ceiling seemed a bit anticlimactic

IT WORKED! I know it’s simple, and I know it would have probably worked seamlessly had I ordered the correct components from the start, but there’s just nothing like the rush of something you’ve been tinkering with finally working. There’s just a special satisfaction in trying and failing and deciding to try again.

Now to finally build the housing and get it outside! The Mynaturewatch website provides some general instructions, but there’s a lot of freedom in deciding how you want to put everything together.

The housing should be water/weather-proof, so I decided to go with something that had a secure lid, but was made of plastic and had a wide enough mouth to make changing the battery simple. I went with a salted caramels container that just had a few caramels left that needed to be disposed of.

The label cleaned up with a moderate amount of effort and some rubbing alcohol

After that, I carefully drilled holes in the jar and the lid of a Gatorade bottle I found while rooting around in the recycling bin. I also mounted the Raspberry Pi and the camera on a piece of cardboard, as recommended in the instructions, but I ended up hating that and re-doing the whole thing a few days later (worth a post? I don’t know. I did disassemble and reassemble a hot glue gun in the process, which was something I wasn’t planning on doing when I woke up that morning).

The nice holes and the worthless cardboard

Now for the Sugru! Immediately after ripping open the packet, I read that it was not intended for use on oily plastic (rude). My PETE caramel container fell into this category, but I decided to try anyway because, while I religiously read instructions, I also distrust them.

I sorta regret picking yellow (instead of orange, which I also had but didn’t use for unknown reasons)

See it’s sticking JUST FINE.

I screwed the weather cover (chopped up Gatorade bottle) to the front, tossed in a battery, and found a semi-secure place to prop the contraption. All that was left was to wait for my first customers!

I’m not going to say the washi tape holding the cardboard to the container was “secure” or “well thought out”

The above location also happens to be right outside of my office window, which I meant I could monitor (spy on) activity in real time. An hour or two of refreshing the photo gallery and a few false alarms later, I finally got my first decent picture! Look at that lil guy that I had also just seen outside of my window!

Gotta love that Gatorade orange glow

The camera was way better than I was expecting, and the image detection capabilities software seem pretty decent. I even moved it to the bird bath and met this new friend:

The “vignetting” is from the bottle weather shield. I could trim it, but I don’t mind it too much.

It’s lots of fun to check for new pictures and I’m already thinking of new applications and improvements: could I rig up a solar pack so I don’t have to change the battery every day? What about creating a roadrunner feeding station with mealworms? How many of these can I afford to make? What’s the best permanent mounting solution? (Hint: it’s not being balanced on a window frame or perched on top of a pile of cinder blocks…)

I’ve also been tweaking my original design to be more stable (I worry about stress on the camera cable) and easier to change the battery pack (before it was dislodging the lens every time).

New version has the Pi velcro-ed to a bottle cap hot-glued to the inside of the container to prevent cable crimping and the lens taped to prevent shifting

This project may be concluded (for now), but I also have lots of other weird little projects in mind, including loosely following my journey to learn about breadboarding and circuits, eventually/possibly/maybe building this 8-bit computer(??), and, of course, sharing bird pics.

If you found this because you got stumped building the Mynaturewatch camera, I hope this helped! I’m certainly not an expert, but I am happy to help troubleshoot if you are experiencing similar issues. If you weren’t building the camera, I hope you are now! Please share your feathered friends with me.

What I’m doing until my next project:

• Sipping peach iced tea, which always brings me back to working in a coffee shop that no longer exists and vague-posting on 2006 Facebook about workplace drama with my coworker
• Listening to Youth Lagoon’s new album, Heaven is a Junkyard, on repeat
• Realizing, just now, that my right shoulder is very sunburned

Relive it all from the beginning: Part 1 and Part 2