Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Weekend Projects – Crittergram Capture Cam”.
Hi I’m Sam with Meg. You probably already know that the Arduino is a cool prototyping platform that allows you to build fun projects with minimal effort. But do you realize just how awesome and interactive it can be in our latest weekend, project Julius shmita and Nick normal teamed up to build the critter gram capture cam an Arduino powered camera that takes pictures anytime movement is detected head on over to your local RadioShack And pick up all the parts needed for this build it’s an easy project that can be completed in about an hour or two and it doesn’t require any soldering. You’Ll need a bare minimum of tools as well. The RadioShack camera module features a built-in optical motion, detector that could trigger the camera when an object moves in front of it, but this would lead to an SD card full of pictures of leaves blowing in the wind.
A PIR sensor only detects when an object moves significantly in the scene, which keeps the photos interesting and action filled. The Arduino is very particular about SD cards. First, step is to format a new card by plugging in the SD shield, into your Arduino and install the SDK library. A link to the library can be found on the project page.
Once you install the library, insert your SD card open up the SD, formatter, sketch and upload it to our Arduino, simply follow the instructions found in the serial monitor and your card should be formatted and ready to use now. Unplug, your Arduino before you wire up any circuits next with the SD card shield still attached to your Arduino, you can add the PIR motion sensor. The sensor needs three wires to connect to the Arduino, we’ll use male to female jumper wires to make it easy connect. The PIR s ground wire to the ground on the sdcard shield, the VCC wire to pin 8 and the output to pin 7.
The PIR sensor has a jumper labeled s and L use it an esper short mode for sensing movement from 15 feet or less and L or long mode for sensing movement from 15 to 30 feet. Now, let’s wire up the camera to the sdcard shield, start by connecting the black ground wire to the ground, pin of the shield and the red 5 volt wire to the 5 volt, pin the brown and white wires connected to the TX and rx pin from the Arduino, but we’ll leave them disconnected next step now, it’s time to upload the code to your Arduino if the TX and rx wires are attached. While you do this, you’ll receive a generic error code once you’ve uploaded the code, you can connect the white wire to the TX chin and the brown wire to the RX, pin next you’ll plug in the power source and hit the reset button.
The camera will start taking pictures and save them as JPEGs to the SD card anytime. It senses movement once you’ve gathered a few pictures. Unplug your Arduino eject the SD card and download the pictures to your computer.
If you need to adjust the focus on your camera simply twist the lens barrel to maximize the potential of your critter gram capture cam, you will need some kind of enclosure to protect all the components we used. Radio Shack’s project and closure skeleton kit, which proved to be a great way of containing all the components, few pieces of foam tape or hot glue for mounting the sensor and camera. Along with some zip ties to help with wire management. And now our camera is ready to capture the project. Enclosure is great for keeping all the components safe and secure, but how about adding additional camouflage and helps conceal your project may be hollow out. A book are usable, birdhouse or even a simple shoebox to hide the electronics. Now you can use your critter gram capture cam in an extra stealthy mode to catch a neighborhood, critter terrorizing your garden or grab a shot of your pooch or spouse.
Pilfering extra snacks, if you do catch any critters or humans, be sure to upload your pictures and tag them hash tag, critter gram on Facebook, Google or Twitter or post them on the project. Page we’d love to see what you catch with your critter gram capture, cam .