This picture was taken at midnight, and takes a very special setup.
The key to this is the camera, an old Olympus SP-500UZ 6 megapixel point-and-shoot that can be found used for $50-100. This camera is rather old, but it has some important, hard-to-find features:
- Fully controllable by USB
- Can be powered by a 6v DC jack (batteries not required)
- 10x optical zoom
- Exposures up to 60 seconds! (this is how the above image is so bright)
I run custom software on a 10 inch Dell mini laptop to control this camera. It takes pictures through my spare bedroom window, one picture every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
You see, these cameras like to randomly glitch out and stop responding correctly to commands over USB. So my software commands a Web Power Switch to power cycle the camera whenever it fails to take a picture. But besides that, this is a pretty rock-solid setup. The only thing that would shut it down is the computer freezing up (it happens) or the power going out long enough for the laptop to shut down. Laptops don't have the feature that allows a computer to start up automatically when power is restored.
