Record video using motion detection
OUR EXPERT
Jonni Bidwell is fairly contrary. His garden grows with silver bells and cockle shells and Raspberry Pis all in a row.
YOU NEED
Raspberry Pi (3 or higher recommended) Raspberry Pi OS Lite on an 8GB+ card Pi Cam (or any other camera you can get working) Battery or other power source (PiJuice is advised).
There are all sorts of things you can do with a Pi and a camera – some of which we dare not mention, and some of which we’ve already covered. Back in , for example, we showed you how to make a Pi bodycam. We’ve also done stop-motion video () and a neat Pi camera booth (). Way, way back in we also made a motion-detecting camera, and we thought it’d be good to revisit this because it’s actually much simpler to set up now. One application for this project is filming wildlife in your garden. Depending on your local climate, you’ll want to waterproof your Pi beforehand and there are a number of external cases that can do just this. You’ll need to have some means of powering it too. We used a PiJuice HAT, which you can connect to an external USB battery or solar panel to top up.
