For my birthday in the summer of 2023, I was given a Raspberry Pi Camera, which, very much Heath Robinson style, I fixed to the conservatory window looking out onto our back garden.
The camera takes a snapshot every hour, night and day, so I end up with a lot of images that are basically just black rectangles. I have written some code to clean them all up, add dates, and convert them into a video. If you are interested in how that was all done, you can read about that on my technology blog. TL;DR it is simple to do but takes a long time to complete the processing.
The Director’s Cut
One frame an hour for roughly 12 hours over 365 days leads to a video that is about an hour and 14 minutes in length, and I think that nobody is going to sit through that! Therefore, I have created a taster version which just includes the image from midday. This means that there is the most light, and the video comes in at a more manageable five and a half minutes.
I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not the most riveting film you are ever going to see but to increase the excitement score one point for spotting each of the following:
- Robot lawnmower
- Leaf blower
- Paddling pool
- Paw Patrol ball
- Compost bags
- me!
One final point on the video is that there’s not much change from month to month. Climate change seems to have robbed us of our seasons.
I did that in 2016 from a back window in my house overlooking the back lawn and garage, except I did it manually taking a photo at 10am every day except when we were on vacation. Amazing to see the day to day changes in the weather and changing of the seasons!