I Made a Critter Capture Cam
Project Type: Arduino
Software: Arduino IDE
OS: Ubuntu but this project can be done in Windows or Mac OS X
Project Source: Critter Capture Cam Project from Make
I only recommend this project if you just want to tinker and learn.
There are plenty of critter camera on the market that are cheaper than this project. Plus you won't have to go through the trouble of putting together.
The best thing about this project was playing with the camera shield.
Skimming over the Camera Shield Manual I noticed the diagram showed an output for analog TV for an RCA cable.
I sliced open an old RCA cable and found a large cable for ground and a shielded cable for the signal.
I wired the cable to the camera shield and confirmed that it works on my TV.
The analog out is not used in this project but there may be some applications for this feature in the future.
The first thing the project instructs you to do is download the sdfat library.
The link on the website is old. The file has been moved to https://github.com/greiman?tab=repositories.
Just unzip the sdfat-master zip and use the arduino IDE to import the library. You may need to restart the arduino IDE to see the changes.
I also found the sketch from the website wouldn't open so I ended up viewing the code from github and copying and pasting it into to IDE.
Once again, I got wires crossed. Remember camera TX connects to RX arduino and RX Camera connects to TX arduino.
What I hated the most about this project was the enclosure. The rivets for the enclosure suck! They break easy and are not reusable. I'm not sure I'll use this enclosure again.
The project has its problems but the components might be useful for something cool.