For the Geeks

A history of my attempts to create a timelapse movie of the build.

The idea: put a camera on the inner apex of the front wall, capture all the goings-on at 1 minute (later 20 second) intervals for the duration, make a movie out of it. Simples.

Camera #1 (Autumn 2020)

With the help of No.1 son Jack, we managed to put together a camera run by a Raspberry Pi Zero computer, in a nifty little box and bracket, all available from https://thepihut.com/ at a fraction of the price of a real timelapse rig, which was going to cost hundreds of poundlings. 

Plus points: cheap, easy

Minus points: had to offload the photos regularly via a USB interface. Given the position of the camera 8m off the ground, this required a laptop and a very long micro USB lead, which eventually degraded so badly that comms became more and more unreliable.

Camera #2 (April 2021)

Again with help from Jack, we went wireless with a Raspberry Pi Zero W in a near identical setup. Now the means of downloading was via wireless interface to my phone. I was really quite proud of this as I did the code mostly on my own like a grown-up.

Plus points: convenience. Saunter up, turn on wireless hotspot on phone, wait for the Pi to connect, download the files. Range about 15m so adequate.

Minus points: Battery life. The setup used motorcycle-type batteries that needed swapping about every 10 days. We eventually rigged up a phone charger to feed the Pi via the original 10m USB lead, which was ok for that purpose. Also speed of download, which was roughly 30 seconds per file. Since I upped the frames to one every 20 seconds (daylight hours only), the rig produced 33 frames per day, which is a lot of standing around. I eventually stopped downloading the files, having calculated the disk space on the Pi could hold enough data to give me time to develop camera #3. WRONNNNG

Camera #3 (Currently half-built)

Again with the Raspberry Pi Zero, again with the nifty box. This time we include a SIM card and program it to upload resulting images to my web storage. 

Plus points: completely independent.

Minus points: well.

My first attempt to do the soldering required to interface the SIM assembly to the Pi circuit board resulted in a damaged SIM (sorry Jack) so I had to order a replacement. 

While I await the new SIM assembly (I ordered two), I have discovered that Camera #2 has stopped taking new images. I presume the disk is full. This puts the pressure on somewhat, so I thought the best solution was to come on here and whinge about it.

Feel better now. More later.