Schlagwort: wildlife

  • The Nest Box: DIY Springwatch with Raspberry Pi

    The Nest Box: DIY Springwatch with Raspberry Pi

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Last week, lots and lots of you shared your Raspberry Pi builds with us on social media using the hashtag #IUseMyRaspberryPiFor. Jay Wainwright from Liverpool noticed the conversation and got in touch to tell us about The Nest Box, which uses Raspberry Pi to bring impressively high-quality images and video from British bird boxes to your Facebook feed.

    Jay runs a small network of livestreaming nest box cameras, with three currently sited and another three in the pipeline; excitingly, the new ones will include a kestrel box and a barn owl box! During the spring, all the cameras stream live to The Nest Box’s Facebook page, which has steadily built a solid following of several thousand wildlife fans.

    A pair of blue tits feeds their chicks in a woolly nest

    The Nest Box’s setup uses a Raspberry Pi and Camera Module, along with a Raspberry Pi PoE HAT to provide both power and internet connectivity, so there’s only one cable connection to weatherproof. There’s also a custom HAT that Jay has designed to control LED lights and to govern the Raspberry Pi Camera Module’s IR filter, ensuring high-quality images both during the day and at night. To top it all off, he has written some Python code to record visitors to the nest boxes and go into live streaming mode whenever the action is happening.

    As we can see from this nest box design for swifts, shown on the project’s crowdfunding profile, plenty of thought has evidently been put into the design of the boxes so that they provide tempting quarters for their feathered occupants while also accommodating all the electronic components.

    Follow The Nest Box on Facebook to add British birds into your social media mix — whatever you’ve got now, I’ll bet all tomorrow’s coffees that it’ll be an improvement. And if you’re using Raspberry Pi for a wildlife project, or you’ve got plans along those lines, let us know in the comments.

    Website: LINK

  • Helen’s hoglet: an adorable adventure

    Helen’s hoglet: an adorable adventure

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    Today is a bank holiday here in England, as well as for lucky people in Wales and Northern Ireland. Pi Towers UK is running on a skeleton crew of Babbage Bear, several automated Raspberry Pis, and Noel Fielding, who lives behind the red door we never open.

    So, as a gift for you all while we’re busy doing bank holiday things, here’s a video that Helen Lynn just recorded of one of the baby hedgehogs who live in her garden.

    Helen’s hoglet

    Uploaded by Raspberry Pi on 2018-08-24.

    You’re welcome. See you tomorrow!

    Website: LINK

  • Flying Birds Always Aroused My Admiration, Which Is Why I Want To Illustrate Them

    Flying Birds Always Aroused My Admiration, Which Is Why I Want To Illustrate Them

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Each bird flies differently. Eagles majestically soar, the flight of a Hoopoe is like a butterfly flight, it looks like it’s swimming in the air. The flight of the hummingbird is like a small helicopter, hovers in the air and even flies in the reverse direction.

    Birds is an infinite treasure of inspiration for me, that’s why, for a few years, I can not stop painting them and admire them. Binoculars, a brush, beautiful weather and a bird that I can observe and paint, for me, is full of happiness.

    You can also see my previous watercolor birds here and here.

    More info: karolinakijak.com

    White-tailed Eagle

    Grey Heron

    Barn swallow

    Mute swans

    White stork

    Barn swallow #2

    Raven

    Grey Heron #2

    Kingfisher #1

    Kingfisher #2

    Kingfisher #3

    Kingfisher #4

    Hummingbirds

    Barn Owl

    Hummingbird

    Pink Flamingos

    barn swallow #3

    barn swallow #4

    barn swallow #5

    Robin

    European Goldfinch

    Hoopoe

    Kingfisher on branch

    Hummingbird

    Magpie

    Kingfisher

    Kingfisher

    Goldcrest

    Kingfisher

    Website: LINK

  • A hedgehog cam or two

    A hedgehog cam or two

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Here we are, hauling ourselves out of the Christmas and New Year holidays and into January proper. It’s dawning on me that I have to go back to work, even though it’s still very cold and gloomy in northern Europe, and even though my duvet is lovely and warm. I found myself envying beings that hibernate, and thinking about beings that hibernate, and searching for things to do with hedgehogs. And, well, the long and the short of it is, today’s blog post is a short meditation on the hedgehog cam.

    A hedgehog in a garden, photographed in infrared light by a hedgehog cam

    Success! It’s a hedgehog!
    Photo by Andrew Wedgbury

    Hedgehog watching

    Someone called Barker has installed a Raspberry Pi–based hedgehog cam in a location with a distant view of a famous Alp, and as well as providing live views by visible and infrared light for the dedicated and the insomniac, they also make a sped-up version of the previous night’s activity available. With hedgehogs usually being in hibernation during January, you mightn’t see them in any current feed — but don’t worry! You’re guaranteed a few hedgehogs on Barker’s website, because they have also thrown in some lovely GIFs of hoggy (and foxy) divas that their camera captured in the past.

    A Hedgehog eating from a bowl on a patio, captured by a hedgehog cam

    Nom nom nom!
    GIF by Barker’s Site

    Build your own hedgehog cam

    For pointers on how to replicate this kind of setup, you could do worse than turn to Andrew Wedgbury’s hedgehog cam write-up. Andrew’s Twitter feed reveals that he’s a Cambridge local, and there are hints that he was behind RealVNC’s hoggy mascot for Pi Wars 2017.

    RealVNC on Twitter

    Another day at the office: testing our #PiWars mascot using a @Raspberry_Pi 3, #VNC Connect and @4tronix_uk Picon Zero. Name suggestions? https://t.co/iYY3xAX9Bk

    Our infrared bird box and time-lapse camera resources will also set you well on the way towards your own custom wildlife camera. For a kit that wraps everything up in a weatherproof enclosure made with love, time, and serious amounts of design and testing, take a look at Naturebytes’ wildlife cam kit.

    Or, if you’re thinking that a robot mascot is more dependable than real animals for the fluffiness you need in order to start your January with something like productivity and with your soul intact, you might like to put your own spin on our robot buggy.

    Happy 2018

    While we’re on the subject of getting to grips with the new year, do take a look at yesterday’s blog post, in which we suggest a New Year’s project that’s different from the usual resolutions. However you tackle 2018, we wish you an excellent year of creative computing.

    Website: LINK

  • Journeying with green sea turtles and the Arribada Initiative

    Journeying with green sea turtles and the Arribada Initiative

    Reading Time: 4 minutes

    Today, a guest post: Alasdair Davies, co-founder of Naturebytes, ZSL London’s Conservation Technology Specialist and Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow, shares the work of the Arribada Initiative. The project uses the Raspberry Pi Zero and camera module to follow the journey of green sea turtles. The footage captured from the backs of these magnificent creatures is just incredible – prepare to be blown away!

    Pit Stop Camera on Green Sea Turtle 01

    Footage from the new Arribada PS-C (pit-stop camera) video tag recently trialled on the island of Principe in unison with the Principe Trust. Engineered by Institute IRNAS (http://irnas.eu/) for the Arribada Initiative (http://blog.arribada.org/).

    Access to affordable, open and customisable conservation technologies in the animal tracking world is often limited. I’ve been a conservation technologist for the past ten years, co-founding Naturebytes and working at ZSL London Zoo, and this was a problem that continued to frustrate me. It was inherently expensive to collect valuable data that was necessary to inform policy, to designate marine protected areas, or to identify threats to species.

    In March this year, I got a supercharged opportunity to break through these barriers by becoming a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow, meaning I had the time and resources to concentrate on cracking the problem. The Arribada Initiative was founded, and ten months later, the open source Arribada PS-C green sea turtle tag was born. The video above was captured two weeks ago in the waters of Principe Island, West Africa.

    Alasdair Davies on Twitter

    On route to Principe island with 10 second gen green sea #turtle tags for testing. This version has a video & accelerometer payload for behavioural studies, plus a nice wireless charging carry case made by @institute_irnas @ShuttleworthFdn

    The tag comprises a Raspberry Pi Zero W sporting the Raspberry Pi camera module, a PiRA power management board, two lithium-ion cells, and a rather nice enclosure. It was built in unison with Institute IRNAS, and there’s a nice user-friendly wireless charging case to make it easy for the marine guards to replace the tags after their voyages at sea. When a tag is returned to one of the docking stations in the case, we use resin.io to manage it, download videos, and configure the tag remotely.

    The tags can also be configured to take video clips at timed intervals, meaning we can now observe the presence of marine litter, plastic debris, before/after changes to the ocean environment due to nearby construction, pollution, and other threats.

    Discarded fishing nets are lethal to sea turtles, so using this new tag at scale – now finally possible, as the Raspberry Pi Zero helps to drive down costs dramatically whilst retaining excellent video quality – offers real value to scientists in the field. Next year we will be releasing an optimised, affordable GPS version.

    green sea turtle Alasdair Davies Raspberry Pi Arribada Initiative

    To make this all possible we had to devise a quicker method of attaching the tag to the sea turtles too, so we came up with the “pit-stop” technique (which is what the PS in the name “Arribada PS-C” stands for). Just as a Formula 1 car would visit the pits to get its tyres changed, we literally switch out the tags on the beach when nesting females return, replacing them with freshly charged tags by using a quick-release base plate.

    Alasdair Davies on Twitter

    About 6 days left now until the first tagged nesting green sea #turtles return using our latest “pit-stop” removeable / replaceable tag method. Counting down the days @arribada_i @institute_irnas

    To implement the system we first epoxy the base plate to the turtle, which minimises any possible stress to the turtles as the method is quick. Once the epoxy has dried we attach the tag. When the turtle has completed its nesting cycle (they visit the beach to lay eggs three to four times in a single season, every 10–14 days on average), we simply remove the base plate to complete the field work.

    If you’d like to watch more wonderful videos of the green sea turtles’ adventures, there’s an entire YouTube playlist available here. And to keep up to date with the initiative, be sure to follow Arribada and Alasdair on Twitter.

    Website: LINK

  • Stunning Award-Winning Wildlife Animal Photos

    Stunning Award-Winning Wildlife Animal Photos

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    To keep things a bit more on the geeky side, we’ll start things off with a fascinating look (yet non-award-winning photo) at the black dragonfish, which lives in the deep parts of the Atlantic Ocean beyond where any plant life grows or light reaches.

    CYczW1r

    Official Source: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/temporary-exhibitions/wpy/index.jsp

    http://www.boredpanda.com/wildlife-photographer-of-the-year-2013-winners/