Welcome to paalsinehoner.net

This netsite is dedicated to some chickens living in my back yard.

An entire netsite, just to keep track of a couple of chickens?

Well, you have probably seen even more boring sites on the web. The background for these pages is that I was looking for a hi-tech solution to a rather mundane problem. What do I do with my small flock, if I have to leave town for a couple of days?

In the dark middle ages (i.e. before 1995 or so) the only practical solution was to have somebody check ever so often. Maybe a neighbor, or maybe the newspaper boy. In principle, I should be able to leave enough food to last for a week or two. And there are drinking fountains that can be connected to the water mains. But there are all kinds of things that might go wrong.

The modern solution is video surveillance, with live internet access. I can now be anywhere in the world, and still be able to check that the food and water supplies are not empty. And that the birds seem reasonbly healthy. If I am out in the mountains with no internet access, I can always find somebody willing to check the net for me.

There are some technical details here that I haven't sorted out yet. Professional surveillance cameras are too expensive for this project. I'd like to have at least 2 or 3 cameras, so the unit cost should be low. Devices sold as "Web Cameras&quit; can be very cheap. But the image quality is often bad. I also considered using a digital compact camera instead of a web camera. I don't really need the 10-15 frames per second that a web camera typically gives. 10-15 frames per minute should be ample. But while a consumer grade compact camera could be programmed to do this, I doubt that it would last long. The mechanical parts of those cameras just aren't designed for continuous use.