How the Trail Cam is Done

The first thing I had to do was find a suitable location.  My plan was to have all the equipment (PC, monitor, cam) right at the trail and run power and a phone line to the equipment.  There is technology out there that allows just the cam to be there, but those cams are a bit pricey (about $500+) and are also better suited for a computer that is on a high speed internet connection.  I was fortunate enough to have a friend who's back yard backs up to one of the main trails up here, so after a little deal making, I got his permission to have all the equipment out there.  

Once the site was obtained, then I needed to figure out a way to secure the equipment from the weather and any vandals.  I realized that there was no way to make the equipment completely secure from vandals, but it needed to at least deter someone from wanting to mess with it.  My main concern with the weather was to keep the equipment dry.  I figured the cold would not be as much an issue, as the computer would generate it's own heat and most computer equipment works better under cold conditions that hot anyway.  Therefore, the box is not insulated and everything worked just fine, even with temps of -26 degrees F last year.  What I came up with is a box made of OSB plywood to hold the computer and monitor.  The box is elevated off the ground to allow easier access to and also to keep it from getting completely buried under the snow in the winter.  I still have to dig out around the computer in the winter, but I am afraid that if I elevate the box too much, then the strong winds that we get up here could topple it.  I actually use metal fence posts to elevate the box.  They are attached to the box and then the posts are driven into the ground.  I painted the outside of the box to help protect it from the moisture and attached aluminum roof flashing to the top to help protect it even further from the elements.  The roof was painted before the flashing was applied.  There is power and phone running to the box.  I had a second phone line setup and pay for it, so that it will not conflict with my friends phone line usage.  The box is only about 50 feet from the back of the house, so there was no meaningful voltage drop to the machine.  I do not know how far I could run power through extension cords before the power drop became too large to be able to run the computer, but a previous setup had a power cord run of about 100 feet and there was no problems.

To secure the camera and also get it closer to the trail, I used two 10 foot pieces of PVC electrical conduit.  I did not use all 10 feet of one of the pieces of PVC conduit.  Once end of the conduit is supported by the computers box and the other is supported by a 2x4.  I took metal strapping and helped to secure the camera end of the PVC to the 2x4.  I made sure to have the cam and it's 2x4 support 6-7 feet off the trail and it actually sits amongst several small trees.  That way I am not putting any snowmobiler at an adverse risk.  They would hit the trees before they hit the 2x4 and the 2x4 would also give quite easily and pull out of the ground.  The cam is about 100 feet from a road crossing in the trail, so speeds at that location are typically under 20 mph anyway.  To secure the cam, I used a PVC electrical junction box.  The box is normally used for connecting 2 separate lengths of the PVC tubing and forming a 90 degree angle.  I used one of the connection openings to allow the camera to look out of.  I removed the lower 1/2 of the connection receiver on the junction box because snow has a way of accumulating everywhere up here and would pile up in front of the camera and block the view.  I also placed a piece of 1/8" clear plastic in the opening that the camera looks through to help protect the camera from the elements.  The camera generates it's own little bit of heat and I did not have any problems with it functioning in the -26 degree weather last year.

The camera now being used is a Veo Velocity Connect.  It provides true 1280 x 1024 resolution images at 1.3 mega pixels.  Because the camera shoots such high quality images, it does need some special computer hardware and software.  The hardware requirements are a 650 MHz Pentium III or AMD Athlon processor or faster, 256 MB of ram, 300 MB of hard disk space a USB 2.0 port, SVGA 800x600 resolution Monitor, 24-bit color, DirectX Compatible 16 MB Video Card and a 12x CD-ROM drive or better.  I will tell you that my computer only has 192 MB of ram and works.  I think the 256 MB is really needed for the video conferencing that the cam can perform.  All other hardware requirements are needed for the cam to take still shots and upload them to the web.  The software requirements are Windows 2000 or XP.  It will not run on Windows 95, 98 or ME.  

I can say that I also use(d) cams from Logitech (Quick Cam Pro 4000) and Creative (PC CAM 600 or PC CAM 550).  Their resolutions are not as great, but they also require less hardware and software.  The cams from Creative seem to be better than the Logitech, but not by much.  The cost of the cams are in the $65-$100 range.

Many of the cams come with their own software to run the cam, take a picture and then upload to the web.  However, I have found some of these software programs to be less than friendly to work with and they will not support other cams.  For those reasons, I use a cam software called KABcam.  The software can be downloaded for free as an evaluation copy from their website.  The evaluation copy does not have an expiration date, but will put a watermark on all the images.  The purchase price for the software is only $20 and I recommend you just purchase the license for software, as it works great and has worked for all the types of cams I have used.

I think that about covers the things.  Hope this helps anyone who is interested in having their own cam.

-John