The bat house provides roosting habitat for bats which can reduce pest and insects, like mosquitoes, moths, and beetles in your yard. Have you ever considered watching and exploring the bat’s activities inside the bat house? You can buy a thermal video camera that produces images from the heat emitted by objects (rather than light reflected off them) for less than $5,000, complete with a fully weatherproof enclosure and the ability to automatically record several nights of video on a removable memory card. However, We need to watch the bat house more efficiently, cheaply and for longer periods. The Wi-Fi/IP bird box camera is a suitable tool to observe your bat house with.
There are certian challenges to watch the bat house with a video camera. The bat house is usually flat so it is usually impossible to shoot from the top of the bat house. According to the Mark Guyton’s idea, the best position to shoot the bat house is to set up the camera on the side in order to shoot into the bat house. There’s space needed to be reserved inside the partitions, so the camera can view the bat’s activities. Besides the bat’s house design, you should consider the features of the camera as well.
Tiny IP Camera
Before you can watch the bat house on a mobile phone, the video has to be digitized. The Wi-Fi or IP bird box camera is a tiny camera built based on IP technology. You can connect to the camera with mobile phone, tablet or PC computer to receive the live video. There is no extra add-on required. Technically the Wi-Fi bird box camera is kind of a compact computer with a video sensor to capture the video. The size should be small to fit into the bat house. The bird box camera definitely could fill it.
Adjustable lens
The camera’s lens should be adjustable. While the camera is shooting closely, the focus becomes very sensitive. It is easy to test this optical feature with a camera on our mobile phone. You change distance a little bit, the focus will switch, the image gets fuzzy. You will need to adjust the lens to re-focus. That is one of the essentials with a bird box camera. There is no way to have a pre-focus camera to match depth between the space inside the bat house.
WiFi vs Wire bird box camera
The camera has to be hooked up the home network for remote viewing the bat house. Whether to choose WiFi or wire bird box camera depends on the situation. With a wire IP bird box camera, you should wire Ethernet cable to one of the network ports (RJ45) for both power and data. The power doesn’t need to present next to the bat house. You can connect the Wi-Fi bird box camera to your home network as long as the Wi-Fi coverage is good. With a DC extension cable, the AC outlet doesn’t need to present close to the bat house either. Both cables can be buried underground with outdoor grade cables. There is one more option: is the battery power. You may need to re-charge the battery constantly 4 days around. It could be a wire-free camera system with a battery setup.
Audio pickup
The audio pick up is required with the camera if you want to listen to the audio inside the bat house. The bird box camera has a built-in microphone to hear the audio from the bat house. You will watch the HD live video as well as the audio on your mobile devices.
Night Vision
The bat is sensitive to the light. The visible light at night is one factor that the bats don’t feel safe. However, there is only black image from the camera without light. The invisible infrared built-in birdhouse camera can light up the area without disturbing the bat. It is 940nm invisible infrared. You will see clear image on the mobile phone after the infrared is turned ON.
Outdoor/Indoor bird box cameras
Most of the bird box cameras are not waterproof. So you will need extra space to keep the camera out of the rain, like Mark Guyton’s bat house. The outdoor bird box camera is a little bigge rin size than the indoor bird box camera. You may consider the dimension while you select the outdoor bird box camera to fit into your bat house.
Recording – sharing
If the camera has been connected to a network, others can view the camera with its ID after they install the app on their mobile phone. If you don’t want to share the camera directly, the micro SD card recording feature allows you to record the video on the micro SD card, you can download the recording files to the mobile phone and share on other social platforms.
Message Notification
You may have no idea when the bats move into the house. The camera’s notification can send you a message while there is any change in the image. The camera will detect the change between two consequent frames and send out the alert message to the app. It is able to tell if or when is entering the bat house.
