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MtnGoat
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MtnGoat
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PostTue Jan 28, 2020 9:53 am 
A friend found a bear wintering under his cabin. Not daring to crawl into the crawlspace with a live bear in there...he drove an RC truck with webcam affixed to it into range, and after an initial attack which somehow ended with the camera upright and operational, now has live vid....
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Camera Placement: Getting the camera in place was difficult, risky and nerve racking. I paid the neighbor kid $100 to crawl under… Haha NO I didn’t! - but you see the issue. The camera would have to be placed within 6 ft of a live, not always sleeping bear. If the bear wakes up and gets territorial or feels threatened, it could come outside to get me! It could also attack and kill the camera. The solution: I got a small RC 4x4 truck from Walmart, took the jeep body off of it and attached the security camera to the top. Some drive-testing in my house at night helped me determine the optimal camera angle, IR lighting range and what different distances look like on the video feed, and I got some practice driving by watching the streaming video on my iPhone. Driving by watching video thru a narrow FOV is called “the soda straw effect” because you lose all peripheral awareness. Practicing in my house was a critical step. The camera needed a CAT5 and a power cable, so I extended the camera power with some 20ga twisted pair (camera draws 1A) and taped it to the cat5 every 2ft. This 60ft of umbilical cord would drag behind the camera truck so I attached it firmly to a low point that could handle the pull and secured the connections well. After some full-system verification of video throughput and RC control, I sent the camtruck in thru a ventilation opening in the foundation on the opposite side of the cabin from the bear. If the truck got stuck, I would pull it back out by the cord and try again. The driving was difficult, the dirt under there was deep dust and there were more obstacles than I expected. I had hoped to creep forward, watch the bear, creep forward, make sure it was still sleeping, go a little more… slow and easy. What I ended up doing was more like a desert race truck towing a piano over a sand dune. Which woke up the bear, and made the bear angry. When the intended target of a covert surveillance operation becomes aware of the presence of surveillance, this is called “burning the target” and can undermine surveillance efforts from that point forward. it can also trigger immediate retribution, which is what happened in this case. The bear woke up saw the camtruck as a threat and attacked it. However, camtruck took reapeated blows from a bear paw and possibly some teeth before being left for dead. At this point, I stopped trying to drive to a better vantage point and was just thankful the camera was upright and working. Good enough. This also may have helped convince the bear that the threat had been neutralized so it would leave it alone.

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock. - Will Rogers
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flatsqwerl
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flatsqwerl
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PostTue Jan 28, 2020 9:57 am 
cool!...hope the bear moves a little :>)

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MtnGoat
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PostTue Jan 28, 2020 9:58 am 
she was rolling around a while ago

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock. - Will Rogers
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reststep
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PostTue Jan 28, 2020 3:10 pm 
How often is the image updated?

"The mountains are calling and I must go." - John Muir
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Cyclopath
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Cyclopath
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PostTue Jan 28, 2020 3:34 pm 
Very very cool!

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MtnGoat
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PostTue Jan 28, 2020 3:50 pm 
Should be live, Reststep. She's moving around some right now, just a smidge, but I can see it is live.

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock. - Will Rogers
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flatsqwerl
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PostTue Jan 28, 2020 5:20 pm 
the cub is visible and moving about

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Bernardo
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Bernardo
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PostTue Jan 28, 2020 7:35 pm 
That looks like an ideal den. I hike in bear country often, but have never found a den.

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DigitalJanitor
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Joined: 20 May 2012
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DigitalJanitor
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PostWed Jan 29, 2020 11:37 am 
Have a good rest, big bear and little bear(s)! wub.gif I loved the ingenuity of the camera placement, lol. My husband and daughter are into RC crawlers and while they've put cameras on them for fun- and even attached a camera to the dog for a few minutes once as an experiment- they will be highly interested in this development!

~Mom jeans on wheels
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puzzlr
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Joined: 13 Feb 2007
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puzzlr
Mid Fork Rocks
PostThu Jan 30, 2020 12:16 am 
Just pulled it up for the second time and saw a mouse scurrying around looking for bits to eat. Should have taken a screen shot.

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