Buffalo Dan's Bison

 Today I received some interesting surveillance photos of an American kestrel ( Falco sparverius ) perching on top of my rain gauge.     In the past I have seen small birds such as sparrows perched on the rain gauge, but never a falcon.   

A recent examination of my surveillance system's mobile broadband device web interface (i.e. 192.168.1.1) led me to the discovery of a bunch of hidden and useful information available from the device. While examining the device's webpage, I noticed an icon showing the charge level of the device's battery. Realizing that the icon was updating its status every few seconds, I searched for the source of the updates via Firebug.  As I had suspected, the device was sending the update status via a small JSON file, but what surprised me was the amount of information available in each file that was not reflected on the webpage.   Among the more interesting pieces of data were values for RAC, LAC, MCC, MNC, cell ID, txlevel, and rxlevel.  There was also a great amount of detail on signal quality (see above picture). The basic Python script used to extract the information from the JSON file and create a text block for the automated email. The possibilities for this data a

I recently finished installing the second new surveillance system on the ranch which is now up and running. The new system mounted on a fence post.  Immediately behind the solar panel you will see as one gallon plastic water container.  This is being used as a weather shield for the system's charge controller.  I first used this technique as an improvisation a few years ago when setting up the electric fence energizer system.  It worked so well I've decided to use it again.  Its only vulnerability appears to be exposure to direct sunlight, which is resolved by placing it under the solar panel.  As with the other new surveillance system (mentioned in the previous post ), this system is independently powered with solar panels and linked to the main surveillance system with wifi.  Because the system is mounted on a very stable fence post, I've configured the cameras to detect motion rather than take time lapse images.  This greatly reduces the volume of images being

The very compact surveillance system fits quite well atop a single wooden post. I recently finished installing one of two newly developed security systems at the ranch.  These systems, which I mention in a previous post , are designed to link via wifi to the much larger main security system, but have the advantage of being located in different parts of the ranch and, consequently, providing greater surveillance coverage of the property.  A closeup of the system.  The charge controller is hidden behind the panel just above the battery.  The camera housing holds the camera and the Raspberry Pi.  One of the first images transmitted by the new system.  The camera is out of focus.  Also, as an experiment, I removed the camera's internal near-infrared filter.  This expands the sensor's light spectrum sensitivity slightly and is why the vegetation appears white.  All in all the new system is working pretty well.  I have noticed some issues with loss of wifi connectivity,