paddy-r / birdcam

ALL BIRDS, ALL THE TIME

BirdCam-2000

ALL BIRDS, ALL THE TIME

Like birds, but can't see any? Then BirdCam-2000 is the app for you. Plug in your USB camera and BirdCam-2000 will do the rest, if you're lucky.

Quick start guide

1. To run BirdCam as a standalone app, download the executable (file ending in "exe") from the "Releases" page on the right and double-click when it's downloaded (easiest).
2. To run BirdCam in Python directly, ensure you have Anaconda/Miniconda installed, then follow the commands below. First, either download this repository via the "Code" button to the top-right of the page, or clone it directly using Github or via the command line. Once cloned, create a suitable Python environment using the file provided, and activate it. Then, run BirdCam and enter a world of wonder.

git clone https://github.com/paddy-r/BirdCam
conda env create -n birdcam -f environment.yml
conda activate birdcam
python birdcam/BirdCam.py

Contact, contributing and reporting issues

• If you find any bugs, please send me a message or submit an issue here
• If you'd like to contribute to BirdCam, you can install it in development mode by navigating to the topmost directory, then:

pip install -v -e .

BirdCam is presented in honour of Christopher Gary Packham CBE

As Chris would say: "If it's not about birds, I'm not interested."

birdcam's Issues

Add to readme file

To include:

• Downloading/cloning
• Environment setup
• How to run executable

Create folders for each day, rather than one for images and videos

Currently one video folder and one image folder. Separate by date by creating new folder.

Recurrent errors due to VideoCapture

Added cv2.CAP_DSHOW to VideoCapture to avoid errors, seems to run much more smoothly. Followed hints here, for example.

Tidy up how images and videos are saved

Create directory by date, one for images and videos. Default location is above topmost folder, to avoid stuff being saved within the git repo.

Add file output to info box for n seconds

Display output file paths when GUI buttons pressed, then remove after n seconds.

View multiple cameras simultaneously

Want to allow all available cameras to be shown. Rough list of jobs:

• Find all available cameras and display as checkbox list to user; already partly done in CameraSelector and see issue related to that that needs to be fixed first (#23)
• Create grid of camera viewers for all available cameras
• Create feed via VideoCapture for each camera and cast to grid element
• Select active camera by mouse position

Pip install fails in development mode

Setup file is currently empty, just copy structure from PSDAnalyser for now and test working.

Reduce executable size + Python 3.11

Currently 300MB+, should be much smaller. Try:

• Create environment with conda, then install everything else with pip, where possible
• Update to Python 3.11, test functionality
• Create environment file and streamline
• Exclude pyinstaller as module when creating executable

Add functionality for specifying save locations via menu bar

Currently "file save", "image save" and "video save" items on menu drop-down do nothing. Add dialog for user to specify non-default paths. N.B. File save won't do anything as only images and videos are created at runtime.

Add video creation dialogue to app

Embed image_utils.create_video functionality in app. Roughly:

• Button in menu somewhere
• Opens dialogue to find folder of images to compile into video
• Allow selection of image types -> nah, can just add other formats to allowed types
• Allow specification of frame rate -> allow to be set in settings as well?
• Ask for save location
• Create video filename based on timestamp of most recent image used (rather than by time video created, as in early version)

Bug in CameraSelector

Hangs when trying to run CameraSelector via Connect -> Find camera. Error ends with AttributeError: 'int' object has no attribute '_root'.

Packaging with Pyinstaller -> downgrade to Python 3.10

Pyinstaller requires Python <= 3.10, had to downgrade, also modified environment file. New issue will expand readme and include details of environment setup.

Images not saving at all when running as executable

Bug in grab_frame or grab_feed? Works fine when running as script. Also added print statements at top to say whether running as script or exe.

Image and video processing functionality

To create image processing utilities to do the following

• Started basic functionality -> done in #17
• Process images to detect dark bands, which are intermittent artifacts produced by the camera
• Produce time-lapse video by searching through folders over a specified period

Create video from images

Want to create video from images.

• Select folder of images -> done in #31
• Order all images in folder by data, oldest first -> done in #31
• Create video from series of images, say 2 seconds per image -> done in #31
• Add fade between images
• Add text to first few seconds, plus fade in/out

Image and video file names not updating

Image and video file names are fixed, so current dates/times not being updated. Effect is that single video and image files being created in each session, then overwritten at each capture. To do:

• Ensure new file name created every time
• #14

Have single video-record button

Currently two buttons for "start recording" and "stop recording". Only needs to be one. Rough jobs:

• Change first button label and functionality upon pressing -> toggle between start and stop recording -> done in #25
• Once functionality copied over to first button, remove second button -> done in #25
• Buttons not aligned properly -> done in #26
• Check all default video/image arguments defined and used as attributes in BirdCam object -> done in #26
• Also limit recording time to (say) one minute -> done in #29

Put a bird on it

Change the app icon to a bird