Squirrel Feeder

Been very busy these past few days. I can reveal that the automatic squirrel-activated squirrel-imaging device is now complete! Or almost complete anyway. The table in front of me is littered with the internal bits of digital cameras all customised with extra circuitry soldered in. Most of them work... These will do this when activated by a squirrel opening a feed hopper lid:

• turn on and take 1 photo
• wait ten seconds and take a second photo
• wait 60 seconds in which time squirrels flicking lids up and down will not activate further photos
• turn off ready for next lid opening

If this evening is relatively uneventful I shall put up some pictures of all the electronics and how I'm going to make the switch on the lid using a hack-saw blade, a copper screw and a copper pipe.

And I may have a potential site for the research fairly close to home! It depends on the latest opinions on how dangerous it is to bring reds and grey's close together considering poxvirus transmission from grey to red... Hopefully no greys would get into the feeder anyway but there is the issue of young grey squirrels that are the same size as reds...

# posted by henry @ 4:07 pm