On 19/12/2019 13:02, Toby Newman wrote:


> This is a good present idea for my mum or sister.
Hi Toby.

> How do you power it?
I power mine from an old (ie redundant) laptop power supply to deliver
~ 19volts down a length of 10A two core cable. The sort used for hedge
trimmers or lawn mowers. I use such a high voltage and thick cable to
compensate for the voltage drop of the longish runs to the garden.

At the camera end, this (highish) voltage is fed in to a buck dc-dc
converter eg. https://tinyurl.com/vbbbv8f  This delivers a good steady
supply of 5volts to the pi Zero W, camera and LEDs.
( nb. DO NOT USE A 7805 voltage regulator. It'll get way too hot! )

> What O/S image do you use?
Initially I used raspbian wheezy then later I have been using raspbian
stretch but have updated to buster over the last week or so. All the
cameras are headless Pi Zeros connected to my wifi network.

The image capture is handled by "motion" which can be downloaded from
the repository. Sorry but it's a complex package and does have a
significant learning curve. However, once set up it just runs and runs
and runs.

> Do you find it needs much maintenance to stay online?
The only maintenance is the occasional wipe of the camera lens to remove
dirt.
I also have a few local scripts to handle image archiving and SD card
space management. Mainly run from cron.

The images can be seen on your local network at
:8081 or you can configure your router to pass it
to the internet via a virtual server.
I usually copy the last day's images to a laptop using rsync and view
them there using the application pix.

If you want further info please let me know and I'll help as best I can.
One day I might even put it on a web page.

--
Nev
It causes me a great deal of regret and remorse
that so many people are unable to understand what I write.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05