[Stephen Albers] provides his avian friends a lot of extras with this electronically monitored bird house. This will not only give you a look at what’s going on inside, but offer a source for several other bits of data as well.
First off, a video camera has been mounted to the underside of the roof. This looks down on the nesting area and features night vision so that you can peek in any time day or night. He used a WiFi webcam that operates separately from the other electronics.
With the remainder of the setup he is able to harvest temperature and humidity data inside, temperature outside, force on the bottom of the house (although this [turned out to be] less helpful than anticipated), and a in-and-out count for the doorway offered by an IR transmitter/receiver pair.
This provides quite a bit much more than the last bird house project we saw. that one also left a lot to be desired as far as protecting the electronics. [Stephen] didn’t skip on that kind of protection. many of the electronics are housed in an acrylic chamber in the base of the house. The sensors find themselves nestled in plastic enclosures, although some work needs to be done to guarantee that the temperature and humidity sensors will still function correctly with this setup.