Homebrew Trailcameras

[Bones]

  I heard back from Mark at Yeticam. He was on vacation for two weeks, and he was back ordered on 1040 cases. He is preparing four orders for shipment to members of this forum today. He has read this thread here and wants me to call him about our planned get together.
More later, Bob

[gkowen]

Ok I have my jeweler's screwdriver out and am ready to modify the camera. I will re-read that part and see how it goes.

Ok so that took 1 hour and 11 minutes but I work real carefully.  How can I test the camera at this point?  Does the yeticam controller turn the camera on too?  I suspect that if I ground the shutter wire the camera will take a photo?

The testing failed. Darn!  Touching the red and blue wires together turns the camera on, then touching again turns it off. So that works right. But touching the white to the blue doesn't take a picture. Touching the white to the red turns the camera off.  I suspect the white wire is on a ground point and not the switch contact.

Should be an easy fix.

I had the white wire on the wrong point. It was on the half-press (focus) point. I can now turn my camera on with the wires and take a pic. It only took 1 hour and 45 minutes.  I think while I am waiting on the yeticam parts I will build a wireless remote and set the camera up near the bird feeder.

[bigdave]

gkowen,

Three cheers for having the guts to just dig right in there!!

Bones,

Is the yeticam guy a washington businessman? Thanks for the update and contacting him. I was telling my family about this project over the holidays and they all want one to put in there driveway as sort of a security camera. Not a bad idea. My brothers in law may come and hang out with us to learn about it too.

Hope you all are ready for the big meltdown. 40 degrees is forcast up here for a couple of days this week. Should be a mess.

[Grizzly95]

Yeah we have a heat wave headed our way. The wife is riding my ass to shovel the roof. Looks like I will be bringing home a skid steer from work to clean up the mess.

[gramps]

BigDave
Can't wait...I have been thinking about the security camera also.  Do you know if the infra-red flash is visable to the human eye?   I think the parts are available to build one with the IR flash, but not sure yet.  I am not gonna mess with it for animals, just the security thing.

[Bones]

gkowen, Each time you hack a camera, you will get faster at it. An hour and 45 minutes is good for the first time.
  Everyone that has an order in with Yeti will be receiving it Priority mail in 2 to 3 days. It is time to set a date. I can't come this week-end but any Saturday or Sunday after that. I hope to get with Gramps later this week to show him how to hack the camera, and how to drill and set up the 1040 case. That way, he can help out when we get to Spokane.
  Fred,  I have been talking to you about predator calling and bear hunting for ten years on the internet. I am looking forward to meeting you, and that goes for everyone else.
Bones

[Machias]

  Me too!!

[BaseballStud20]

Well I ordered all of my stuff from yeticam and have at least two cameras on the way. If we cant get together here in the next couple weeks I think im just gonna give it a go by myself. Thanks for all the info Bones.

[bigdave]

Bones,

17th or 24th?   You pick.

[bearbait]

24th is best for bearbait, but I should be able to make either (no camera yet)

[Bones]

24th

[gkowen]

My W80 has what it calls 3200 ISO. This should take a fairly dark picture.  Has anyone tried this? I am concerned that the flash will let people know where my camera is.  I have also thought about adding an external flash to get 50-60 feet of flash range.  Has anyone tried this? I know these sound contradictory, but just thinking about what's best to do. 

[Bones]

gkowen,  You never want to use the high ISO settings because they make your night pictures grainy, and they wash out your day time pictures. I was the first to use these cameras, and it took me almost a year to figure out the best settings.  I will explain how to best use these cameras at our meeting and I will post that info here for those who don't attend the meeting.  You can build an external slave flash that can be used with these cameras, but in my opinion that is not necessary.  If anyone ever wants to do that I will post that info.
  Sony makes an excellent camera, and these cameras have a wide range of features and settings. The factory built trail cameras use what we home brewers call "shrink wrap cameras". Those cameras use a few basic camera components and they are not good quality components, and they are limited in features and settings. I will try to get this information posted on here soon.
Bones

[Bones]

  We will be having another homebrew trailcam building workshop in Walla Walla in late April or early May. This is still in the planning stages, and I will post the details when I have them. This will be advertised locally. It will be held at Steve's Archery Shop on Isaacs Street in Walla Walla. Steve has a nice covered outdoor area where we can set up tables to hack cameras. We will also set up work tables in the parking lot to work on cases. This event will be similar to a tailgate party at a football game, and it should be lots of fun. It will be on a Saturday.
Bones

[Bones]

gkowen, I reread your post. The ISO and flash work exactly opposite of how you think they do. The flash is adjustable on this camera.The flash level is set according to the ISO the camera uses. The brightest flash is when the ISO is set on 3200. When the ISO is set on 100 the flash is VERY WEAK. This seems exactly the opposite of the way I thought it should be. This is how you test the camera to see what I am talking about. Place the selector knob on the camera to the "P" setting. ( The P setting is for manually programmed settings) (The green camera icon is for using fully automatic settings). Go to the menu and set the ISO to 3200. Do this at night, and then take the camera into a dark room. Hold out the camera and take a picture. You will see that the camera uses a VERY BRIGHT flash on ISO 3200. Now go back to the menu, and set the ISO on 100. Then take the same picture. You will see that the camera uses a very weak flash setting on ISO 100. Now compare the pictures. It took me about a year to figure out how to use the ISO to get the best flash setting, and I just figured that out in October. Before then, I always set the camera on the green camera icon and used the camera on fully automatic settings. On this setting the ISO is on automatic. In daylight, the camera uses ISO 100 to 400 depending on whether is is a sunny day or overcast. But on this setting, the camera always uses ISO 800 for night time flash pictures. On this setting, the flash level is only about 50% of the flash available in this camera.
  If you place the selector on the P setting, you can leave all other settings on auto and manually set the ISO to any of the available settings. But as you raise the ISO level, the night pictures become grainy, and the day pictures are washed out. You can't even set the ISO to  800 on the P setting because this hurts the quality of your day pictures. There is no way to use the bright flash on these cameras when the camera is used in a trailcam. So I ran my cameras on auto for a year. I decided that I needed to build external slave flashes for the cameras since I could not utilize the brighter flash ranges of these cameras.
  I bought two Vivatar 2800 flash units on ebay. I planned on ordering two slave flash control boards from bigfoot outdoors.com, and also two 1020 Pelican cases to put these external slave flash units in. But in October, I learned how to use these cameras. The camera has the amazing ability to take  sharp high quality pictures in low light conditions with very little flash. I now use ISO 100, 200 and sometimes 400 depending on the distance I expect the animals to be from my camera. These cameras come with a CD that has a manual for the camera and also photo editing software. This software is called Picture Motion Browser. This software is designed for these cameras, and it allows you to add the flash to your pictures on your computer. I knew this all along, but if you add flash to the higher ISO pictures it destroys them. You never want to use an ISO setting above 400, and 100 or 200 are the best choices. I will post more on this later, and I will also post examples of pictures before and after the flash is added. Sometimes, you don't get this CD with cameras you buy on ebay. I have several of these CD's, and I can send one to anyone that needs it. After you install it on your computer, you can send it to someone else that needs it. You really need this CD for editing your night pictures.
Bones