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YardCam becomes Birdhouse-Cam |
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BirdHouse CamJim and I are always dreaming and schemeing, and constantly on the look-out for new projects to tackle. I've never been quite happy with the webcam, to my backyard, sitting up in the window. I just didn't get a decent view of the yard. So, Jim and I sketched out these visions of a birdhouse to house the webcam outside. |
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| Using the remaining wood shelves from an old dismantled bookcase, we began building our project in Jim's garage. Jim handled the banging and screwing, while I tried tackling measuring and sawing. Little by little, it began to actually start to resemble a birdhouse. | ||||
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| With a quick coat of white paint, the birdhouse was nearly finished. All that remained was putting a plexiglass window into the top half of the birdhouse to protect the webcam, and mounting it to the pole. | ||||
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| When we started looking for a pole, we first tested our theories out with an old branch. Eventually, Jim found an old tether ball pole which would work out perfect for us to bolt the birdhouse to. (Yes, that sentence did end in an infinite, which is very improper. LOL) As you can see, we didn't move the camera too far from where it used to sit up in the window. |  |
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 Drilling a larger hole for the cam cable |
 Working on attaching the house to the pole |
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| With the house built and pole planted, all that was left to do was to mount the birdhouse onto the pool and install the cam. |  |
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| While birds have access to the lower half of the structure, the top half features a large window, and hinged lid. | ||||
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 MouseOver Ta-Da! |
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| Look closely and you can see the cam peeking out through the window upstairs. Because of the bright sunlight though, I've had to put a sunglasses lens in front of the cam to block the flashes of bright light into the camera. |  |
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Can You see me now? Can You see me now? Can You see me now? Testing the Focus |
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Mouseover Spectacular! |
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 Not a MouseOver, but it is animated. LOL |
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Jim helps outside with the final focusing, while I take some "up close" pictures from the cam software inside. | |||
| We had to re-adjust the focus, because you'll notice that the pole and birdhouse have been moved over. We made this move to see even more of the yard! |  |
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| As you can see, the birdhouse turned out pretty close to our original design |  |
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| MouseOver this large picture to see how the security light lights up the birdhouse and yard. | ||||
Current BirdHouse YardCam Picture |
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| Updated: 10/1/05 |
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leatherman @reigningpages.com |
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