By Andrew Liszewski
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I always assumed the most satisfying part of being a birdwatcher was actually seeing the birds with your own eyes, instead of just photos of them in a National Audobon Society guide. So it seems to me like this motion activated bird cam takes some of the ‘sport’ out of birdwatching. Inside the weather-resistant casing is a 1.3 megapixel digital camera that senses motion across a 9×12 foot field-of-view. When a bird enters the frame, the camera can be set to capture up to 20 pictures in 20 seconds which are stored on an included 2GB SD card.
Once mounted the camera can still be panned and tilted up to 15° for the best angle, and there’s even a laser guide showing you exactly where the camera is pointed since it doesn’t have a viewfinder. It’s powered by 4 AA batteries which should keep it running for about 6 months thanks to the camera’s sleep mode which kicks in when no motion is detected, and the fact that it will automatically power itself off at night. Hammacher’s got it for $199.95.
You can do this yourself if you have one of the models of Canon cameras that can use the Canon Hackers Developers Kit. It's a special open-source firmware that you load onto the phone (temporarily and safely) that unlocks a ton of features that are present on the camera's hardware but not visible in the normal menus. Among the many things you can do is to run scripts that do things like time-lapse pictures, motion detection, etc. See http://chdk.wikia.com for details, or doa search for 'chdk'.
You can do this yourself if you have one of the models of Canon cameras that can use the Canon Hackers Developers Kit. It's a special open-source firmware that you load onto the phone (temporarily and safely) that unlocks a ton of features that are present on the camera's hardware but not visible in the normal menus. Among the many things you can do is to run scripts that do things like time-lapse pictures, motion detection, etc. See http://chdk.wikia.com for details, or doa search for 'chdk'.