I bought this camera from Buy.com. It is a weather resistant camera that comes with 100 feet of cable. It has infrared lights so it will work at night. Pretty good for $28. The box is sitting in the doorway and I haven’t opened it, yet.
I don’t think that 100 feet will make it back to the bees from the computer in the cellar, but I can maybe add some more cable. I am not sure if I have to also string electric. My brother Ward says that he bought one at Harbor Freight that uses a hacked RJ11 cable with two of the wires carrying power. I could, I guess,get an RJ11 extension cable ($1.49 cents at the 99 cent store), although the signal might degrade if I stretch it too far. I’ll find out when I open the box.
I might have to make a shelter for the camera. It says weather resistant, which means that rain might destroy it.
This camera is made to plug into a vcr or monitor so I have to find an adapter that can turn it into a web cam. I want to able check bees from work or my desk. I also want to use the motion detector software to capture a series of images if anything moves so I will have some idea of who is hurting my bees.
I have not been happy with webcam software in the past. They did not seem to work well when I tried to create a cat cam. This camera might wind up as a bird cam or back door cam if I can’t get it back to the bees.
