This is how I built my wife a Raspberry PI Bird Cam. My wife and I enjoy watching the birds at our feeders. One day my wife asked if we could stream a live feed of our feeders to YouTube. As luck would have there were plenty of ways to do this. Since I enjoy building things with raspberry pi computers I decided to try. After a few minutes of searching I found My Naturewatch. My Naturewatch has a simple and effective Nature Camera made using the Raspberry Pi Zero W and the camera module. So using My Naturewatch as a guide I built a Raspberry PI Zero Bird Cam.

Parts List:

• Raspberry Pi Zero
• MicroSD Card
• Raspberry Pi Camera Module
• Ethernet Hat
• Power Over Ethernet (PoE) adapters
• DC-DC converter
• 12 – 24 volt wall adapter (at least 15 watts)
• Waterproof Project Box (4″x4″x2″ electrical box)
• My Naturewatch Software

Raspberry PI Zero Bird Cam Build

My Naturewatch website builds the nature camera with a battery and a Raspberry Pi that has WiFi. I wanted my Raspberry Pi Zero Bird Cam to always have power. I decided to use an old Raspberry Pi Zero. As you may know the Raspberry Pi Zero does not have ethernet or WiFi. With no ethernet no ethernet or WiFi I bought an ethernet HAT.

Now that the Raspberry Pi Zero has ethernet I had to find a way to power it so i didn’t have to worry about batteries. I decided to use Power Over Ethernet (PoE). So now I bought theses PoE splitters. These splitters allow the Raspberry Pi Zero to connect to your network and be powered from one cable an ethernet cable to be exact.

One of these splitters connects to your network switch and a power supply (12-24 volt wall adapter). The other splitter connects to the Raspberry Pi Zero ethernet port and a voltage regulator (set for 5.1 volts). Here’s a picture of all the components in the waterproof project box.

Now that the Raspberry PI Zero Bird Cam is assembled I will test it. If testing works as well as I expect then it will be sealed and an ethernet cable will be run to the bird feeder area.

Be sure to check our galleries for photos and videos of the visitors we get at the feeders.