
I get many requests for information on how to set up a wildlife camera in or near a nest. Rather than answer them all repeatedly, I've put this article together to put most of the information in one place and give people a head-start with their project without waiting for an answer.
The first thing to understand before you go putting any camera in a wildlife area is that you may need permission of your local authorities. We need this permission before we can go up a tree, and there are times when we are not allowed near it. Your local authorities should be contacted before you do anything.
The second thing is to understand that power and distance from the internet are the major problems. The rest is pretty much off-the-shelf stuff that can include used video cameras and computers if you want to keep the budget down.
The major cost for such a camera when it is out in the wild is getting the internet connection to it, or getting the video signal back to where the encoder is connected to the internet.
So the first thing to do is answer a couple of questions:
1 - how far away is the nearest "high speed" internet connection (ADSL or Cable modem - minimum 500Kbps outbound connection speed) and is this where you are going to put the encoding computer?
2 - how much outbound bandwidth (usually measured in Gigabytes/month) are you allowed? A typical camera feed uses something around 100Gigs/month
3 - how close is power to where you want the camera?
Once you've answered these questions, read on for more information...