Use as bird nest cam

[mtreid]

Built a platform for an osprey nest at the end of my pier.I would like to place a camera about 4 ft above the nest aimed down.I'm considering the ProHD 1080 wireless.Any ideas whether it can focus at such close range and if field of view would be adequate.It has a plug nearby and is about 200-250 ft from a wireless router that claims to have up to 325 ft range(Verizon Quantum). Also, does the setup require a cell phone network.I saw mention of setup with android app,but I just have internet service with router and a PC.Also, does the camera come with necessary software to watch live feed on a PC, and Blue Iris is only necessary to record the video.Any help answering these questions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[DavidN]

The birds have probably long since hatched, but here's some possible info for you. I use the IP2M-841 in a couple of outdoor locations, even though not designed for it. (They're covered and its New Mexico, rain not being one of our issues.) My 841s focus quite well, close up or far, whereas the one 842 outdoor unit I have is quite frankly terrible in comparison. For instance, I point one at birdhouses & birdfeeder, both about 15 feet away. The birds whiz around and the 841 catches some fabulous video or stills of these little birds not more than a foot away at times. My 842 cannot match it, despite being HD. It's SUPPOSED to though, so it's probably a buggy unit.

(Sadly they're house sparrows, but awesome shots nonetheless.)

You can set up the cameras without a cell phone, you'll just have to plug in an Ethernet cable for configuration. Then making sure you've setup the wifi part, you can put the camera anywhere you want. Mostly. The 330ft limitation on Ethernet applies only to wired Ethernet. Wifi works for as far as you can receive the signal. 250 feet is certainly possible, but without testing impossible to know for sure. Signal strength won't be so great and the picture may suffer, but as a bird cam without lots of movement that might be just fine. You have power nearby, so the major issue will be the strength of your wifi signal out through the house to the tree. A plug in wifi repeater might be something to keep in mind.

Using Firefox you can stream the video from the camera without software, but Amcrest does have software as well. Chrome works in certain circumstances (info is here, I don't use it for this) and Safari for Mac works just fine as well. MS Edge is not supported yet. For recording Blue Iris is good, Amcrest has something in their software package - me, I FTP the snapshots to a Mac and have the videos on an SD card on the camera. (However, the outdoor 842 model has no SD card capability)

Here's a shot from an 841 of 2 house sparrows chasing each other, doing about Mach 2. No blur. It's a screen grab from a video done over VNC, the original looks even better. The closest one is maybe 2 feet away. No focusing issues I can tell.