Wildlife / skyline camera for extreme conditions

pcericm

n3wb
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Hello,

I've been doing some research for a while as far as setting up a 24/7 live-streaming set up for capturing wildlife (elk herd, bears, moose, birds of prey, coyotes/wolves, etc...) and crazy sunsets/storms that come through at our cabin. The kicker is that we see temperatures down into the -40 to -50F range a couple times during the winter, so the selection of cameras are greatly reduced. I've seen some HikVision, Axis, as well as Empire Tech cameras that do go this low with a heater, so I think those may be the only options. I feel like a PTZ camera with a solid zoom would be ideal since there's a pretty big area of coverage to watch (ie; elk herd migrates to an open field for a while each year). Ideally it would be cool to have thermal/night vision capabilities or even IR with some ability to detect what is going on at night as it becomes a very active area when the sun goes down. The goal would be to run this through OBS over to either YT or Twitch, so supporting RTSP would be ideal.

A few practical questions that I have:
1) Is a PTZ camera suitable in extreme temps if the camera suggests it is capable of running at those low temps? Or would you just not actuate any movement in the super extreme temps (not sure if the heaters keep the external case from being frozen?) If a temp drops a few degrees below the rating, what actually happens? Does it fail, or just turn off? A lot of cameras stop right around -40F, and we might see 1 day every couple years that hit -50F.
2) Can you run a heated camera with a POE injector that would provide more power than a POE switch? Or is this completely vendor dependent?
3) Since there is a decent amount of time that we are not here and would leave the stream up - are there any PTZ cameras with a wiper that might be recommended to keep the view reasonably clean? Or any other hacks to put on the surface to keep drying rain, etc etc.
4) How is Empire Tech overall? I've seen a couple that look like they might be a good fit, and are priced a lot better than an Axis, and Hikvision equivilent (ie; EmpireTech PTZ5A4K-25X)

Anyone else running a set up in a similar environment? What camera are you running? I've included a pano from an iPhone of the area of view to ideally be able to capture and a cool sunset pic.

IMG_3992.jpgDSC02241.jpg
 

mat200

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Hello,

I've been doing some research for a while as far as setting up a 24/7 live-streaming set up for capturing wildlife (elk herd, bears, moose, birds of prey, coyotes/wolves, etc...) and crazy sunsets/storms that come through at our cabin. The kicker is that we see temperatures down into the -40 to -50F range a couple times during the winter, so the selection of cameras are greatly reduced. I've seen some HikVision, Axis, as well as Empire Tech cameras that do go this low with a heater, so I think those may be the only options. I feel like a PTZ camera with a solid zoom would be ideal since there's a pretty big area of coverage to watch (ie; elk herd migrates to an open field for a while each year). Ideally it would be cool to have thermal/night vision capabilities or even IR with some ability to detect what is going on at night as it becomes a very active area when the sun goes down. The goal would be to run this through OBS over to either YT or Twitch, so supporting RTSP would be ideal.

A few practical questions that I have:
1) Is a PTZ camera suitable in extreme temps if the camera suggests it is capable of running at those low temps? Or would you just not actuate any movement in the super extreme temps (not sure if the heaters keep the external case from being frozen?) If a temp drops a few degrees below the rating, what actually happens? Does it fail, or just turn off? A lot of cameras stop right around -40F, and we might see 1 day every couple years that hit -50F.
2) Can you run a heated camera with a POE injector that would provide more power than a POE switch? Or is this completely vendor dependent?
3) Since there is a decent amount of time that we are not here and would leave the stream up - are there any PTZ cameras with a wiper that might be recommended to keep the view reasonably clean? Or any other hacks to put on the surface to keep drying rain, etc etc.
4) How is Empire Tech overall? I've seen a couple that look like they might be a good fit, and are priced a lot better than an Axis, and Hikvision equivilent (ie; EmpireTech PTZ5A4K-25X)

Anyone else running a set up in a similar environment? What camera are you running? I've included a pano from an iPhone of the area of view to ideally be able to capture and a cool sunset pic.

View attachment 197296View attachment 197299
My guess a big part of keeping something operational in extreme cold will also be protecting the camera from the water and freeze cycle and keeping water ingress out of the camera and connections.
 

pcericm

n3wb
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My guess a big part of keeping something operational in extreme cold will also be protecting the camera from the water and freeze cycle and keeping water ingress out of the camera and connections.
I was thinking of leveraging the deck to provide some protection for the camera and maybe divert any melted snow water from the deck boards around it (think like an A-frame shaped cover or something). I have an old satellite that we no longer use that goes right into the house about 5 feet away, so was kinda hoping I could pull out the coax and re-run whatever will be required to run this. So I think there would really only be the camera <-> camera cable connection (unless it needs external power, too) to really worry about, but I guess Ill need to figure that out once I pick out the appropriate camera.
IMG_3998.jpg
 

mat200

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I was thinking of leveraging the deck to provide some protection for the camera and maybe divert any melted snow water from the deck boards around it (think like an A-frame shaped cover or something). I have an old satellite that we no longer use that goes right into the house about 5 feet away, so was kinda hoping I could pull out the coax and re-run whatever will be required to run this. So I think there would really only be the camera <-> camera cable connection (unless it needs external power, too) to really worry about, but I guess Ill need to figure that out once I pick out the appropriate camera.
View attachment 197312
Checkout the dahua international catalog also .. Andy could potentially get you any camera dahua has available for the international market.

They have some very nice cameras ..
 

pcericm

n3wb
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The best 4K camera is use this 1/1.2cmos one, the 25x zoom is bit limited for long range warching, this one have Amazing day and night pics. Wiper too

That's one of them that I saw and thought it could be a pretty good fit. Do you happen to know if the auto-tracking feature has a flag to do animal tracking (not absolutely necessary, but would be nice)? I think this would fit the bill. Would need to figure out the proper accessories for power to support heat, IR, ptz. Is it best to reach out via email for a couple other questions?

Thanks!
 
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looney2ns

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That's one of them that I saw and thought it could be a pretty good fit. Do you happen to know if the auto-tracking feature has a flag to do animal tracking (not absolutely necessary, but would be nice)? I think this would fit the bill. Would need to figure out the proper accessories for power to support heat, IR, ptz. Is it best to reach out via email for a couple other questions?

Thanks!
Ask your questions right here.
You would need THIS to power that camera.
 
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pcericm

n3wb
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Ask your questions right here.
You would need THIS to power that camera.
Thanks.

I assume I can stream directly from this camera to OBS running on another system on the same network, right? It does mention 3 streams and the supported protocols but want to make sure it isn't locked into vendor-specific software. I had also wondered if I can get full feature access using Mac's to access the camera vs. PC-based. Worst-case I could install a VM running windows but it would be nice not needing to do that. And I had wondered if setting up tripwires would actually allow it to detect and pick up animals crossing those tripwires? It would be awesome if-so - have had a good bit of bear and moose activity as of late!
 
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looney2ns

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Thanks.

I assume I can stream directly from this camera to OBS running on another system on the same network, right? It does mention 3 streams and the supported protocols but want to make sure it isn't locked into vendor-specific software. I had also wondered if I can get full feature access using Mac's to access the camera vs. PC-based. Worst-case I could install a VM running windows but it would be nice not needing to do that. And I had wondered if setting up tripwires would actually allow it to detect and pick up animals crossing those tripwires? It would be awesome if-so - have had a good bit of bear and moose activity as of late!
Yes to OBS.
Currently, IVS does not specifically pick up animals. Although, it might once in a while, but don't depend on it.
As Andy said above, he is working on possibly getting Animal detection enabled in that cam with a future firmware update.
 

pcericm

n3wb
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Yes to OBS.
Currently, IVS does not specifically pick up animals. Although, it might once in a while, but don't depend on it.
As Andy said above, he is working on possibly getting Animal detection enabled in that cam with a future firmware update.
Great. Yeah I wasn't sure if the animal detection was just broader detection similar to vehicle/person configuration, and that maybe a tripwire would be kinda a catch-all (anything moving track it). Another quick question: I've seen the day/night setting configurations in some videos and wondered if current firmware understand the notion of sunrise/sunset where you could have it move to a pan preset say 20 mins before those events? Or would there at least be a way I could send a trigger to the camera with an outside script through an API from my OBS server? Would be cool to be able to automagically get it into a skyline view.
 

TonyR

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Would you be opposed to streaming direct to YT via RTMP from the camera without having to stream first to OBS with RTSP?
 

pcericm

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Would you be opposed to streaming direct to YT via RTMP from the camera without having to stream first to OBS with RTSP?
The only reason I was going to run it through OBS was so I could put together an overlay with weather station data as part of the stream. Can the camera pull this in directly? Sorry, I have never used one of these cameras so don't know some of the basic the capabilities :) My ideal implementation would be to programmatically make some changes to the camera positioning (ie; skyline for sunrise/sunsets), potentially capture a second steam during the sunrise/sunset periods to write as a video file, process that as a timelapse and then upload those to the YT channel each day. I think I can do the second part on my own server side. If I could write an overlay of weather data in the camera itself, it would free my server (mac mini) up completely to do fun video processing without impacting the stream.
 
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