My Trip to SC and AL

Last weekend Brandon and I went to Aiken to visit Mama and Daddy. Brandon's birthday was Monday so he opened presents on Sunday.

Tonight Brandon had a basketball game. They won 32-29. It was a very exciting game. John said that this was one of the most exciting this season. Brandon scored 2 points. I think he was just showing off because I was there. He has another game Thursday night.

Timelapse test

I've been waiting for one last part to come in the mail for the circuit board. It took it about 3 weeks to get here. I didn't know when I ordered it that it was coming from Thailand. A long way to ship a $2.00 part!

I had a couple of hours before dark so I put in the part, and programmed the chip to take a picture every 10 minutes from 4:00 - 6:00, and strapped it to a fence post. This was the first test. (And the first time I have been able to see if the board can even turn the camera on and off and take a picture.)

I was suprised that everything worked the first time!

I put the photos in the slideshow program to make a short video. The picture is fuzzy because the camera was set on the lowest resolution.

A new project

I thought I would try building a circuit board. I found out about a microchip called a Picaxe. These chips act like mini computers that can be programmed to do different things. The system was designed for high school students to be able to learn and experiment with electronics so it isn't as hard as it looks. (otherwise I wouldn't be able to figure this out!) I spent all day Saturday soldering this thing together:













The plan is to have this one control a camera so that it will take time lapse photos. The idea is to be able to set the time interval to one of several settings: 1 minute, 3 min, 10 min, 30 min, 1 hr or 1 day.



The camera would take pictures during two time periods each day (unless set to only take 1 picture per day). The times for these periods could also be adjusted.





There are a lot of trail cameras around that are activated when a deer walks by. This will be a "field" camera that will take multiple pictures of a large area.
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Terry is down South for a couple of weeks. Said she was wearing shorts outside. Wonder what that is like?

For February, it hasn't really been too cold. High today was bout 38.