The Robin Cam

Derek Mooney of “Mooney Goes Wild” on Radio 1 has a robin cam pointing at a nest in his utility room. It’s the usual webcam quality but it’s good enough that we were able to see the mother robin arrive and feed her chicks.

See the Mooneycam for links to this camera and a blue tit camera in Áras an Uachtaráin (where the Irish President lives). They also have a diary of sorts where Derek keeps a record of what’s happening.

My Linux Webcam

When I bought me PC last year it came with a small little webcam which never worked for me until today when I plugged it in and Ubuntu Linux detected it using the Spca5xx driver. This is what the kernel reported:
“USB SPCA5XX camera found. SONIX sn9c102 + Pas106”
Easycam made it easy enough to install new drivers, and Camorama is a useful tool to control it. (via)

Unfortunately this isn’t very exciting for a number of reasons:

  • It has a manual focus and doesn’t handle changes in light very well.
  • I can’t get it to capture more than 176×144 352×288.
  • There’s no busy road or traffic to see from my window. I could point it at the LEDS on my DSL router?

Oh well! That was fun for five minutes!


An exciting scene in blarney today