Osprey Cams live again this year

[TonyT]

Replaced the camera at nest 2 and some power components.
Winters here are hard on outdoor electronics.

Eggs should be hatching in a week or so.

http://atconet.com/patuxent-river-park-osprey-cameras

[Philip]

Thanks for sharing Tony, they are fascinating. I still remember that runt from last year.
What equipment, cameras/Wi-Fi did you use?

[Ken]

Both mamas are talking today! Good audio and picture quality!

[YeOldeStonecat]

I still remember that runt from last year.

Yeah that poor little guy got beat on all the time. But..that's nature!

[Lefty]

I'm starting to see more and more lately. We have dozens if not hundreds of Osprey nests in Maine. There is even one on top of a light tower in the Bath Iron Works Shipyard. True story, I was fresh water fishing and one saw a fish behind my canoe and went straight into the water 3 feet behind us, scared the crap out of us.

[TonyT]

Thanks for sharing Tony, they are fascinating. I still remember that runt from last year.
What equipment, cameras/Wi-Fi did you use?

Cameras: FLIR N346ZW124
APs/Clients: TP-Link CPE510
TP-Link router
FLIR DVR w/ 4tb drive

We are very pleased with the picture and audio quality of this setup, considering that many other live cam sites are using equipment that costs 10x what we are using. For example, many well funded cam sites are using $2000 Axis cameras with unlimited bandwidth and their audio and pic quality pales by comparison to ours.

You could eat lunch and spend more than it cost us to build the microphone systems, you just have to know how to do it so fan/motor noise is eliminated and wind noise is minimal.

The park IT dept is only giving us 3mb Internet, borderline amount, else I'd be pushing a 1080p live stream. I am using ffmpeg to grab the RSTP streams, convert & and push them to youtubelive via 2 separate .cmd files.

Next task will be to modify the ffmpeg scripts so they push the streams and at the same time write 10 min. segments to an external hard drive in mp4 format. That will make it easier for the park staff to view and grab notable nest events.

BTW, the link in first post is a site I setup recently using a domain I've had parked for 15 years!

[Philip]

I saw the site, looks good Just one live stream was embedded there though.

Thanks for sharing the specs, how do you power the cameras/APs?

[TonyT]

I saw the site, looks good Just one live stream was embedded there though.

Thanks for sharing the specs, how do you power the cameras/APs?

The site has an embedded video from last year. There's a link to the live stream above the pic & video.
Nest 1 is powered via 2- 400w solar panels w/ 2 batteries in parellel, nest 2 has 24v ac in conduit from boathouse to the platform.

If use google sat view you can see the conduit.
https://goo.gl/maps/HyVoPcJaxBZzs28N9

[Easto]

Nest 2 has chicks

[TonyT]

Nest 2 has chicks

Yep, one was born this morning.

[TonyT]

2 chicks in nest 2 now.

[YeOldeStonecat]

3 chicks in nest 2 now...

[TonyT]

3 chicks in nest 1 now, hatched a few days ago.

[Easto]

Some of them are beginning to fly.

[YeOldeStonecat]

Yeah one nest is much more mature than the other.
One nest down to 2 chicks pretty quickly....missed what happened to the 3rd one. Wasn't as long exclusion and beating on like last year.
The other nest..3rd chick looks like its either recently dead, or nearly dead.

[TonyT]

Rarely more han 2 chicks will survive. I think an owl got the runt in nest 2. The horned owls down there are 6" taller than the adult ospreys.