We bring you the following full camera feeds - audio and video - which we stream through YouTube Live.
Make sure you have your sound turned up when the falcons are at home, and more so when the chicks are active (Oct – Nov). We're live and in higher definition and falcon-screeching audio, 24/7/365.
Within our recent upgrades has come an amazing little piece of software that fits inside our Axis cameras from a company called Camstreamer. This really clever software plugin provides both of our the fully-compatible Axis cameras with the capability to stream full audio and full video directly from the cameras, via Charles Sturt's high-speed data network, to an online location such as YouTube Live. We no longer have to rely on old Flash technology, which is being abandoned by the main web browsers. It also means that all platforms that can see YouTube videos can now also follow the streams; this now includes Android and Apple devices!
With the new Camstreamer plugins we can now turn off our old but very hardworking VLC/Flash streaming server, which can finally take a breath after years of 24/7/365 work. It means one less link in the chain between the Axis cameras and the final streaming location.
This nest-facing camera is an Axis 3344-VE model, a day/night, very low-light, all weather, fully bird-proof model, supplied by the fantastic teams at CCTV Hire and Lan1. It's an older model than the new ledge camera but has proven itself to be a reliable & stable source and offers full clarity and contrast, SD-level resolution, for both day and night images. With a little boost from an IR source in low light conditions we're not losing any image quality.
Between 2012 and 2017, we recorded the birds’ behaviour and diet with cameras through the impressive Milestone XProtect Essential surveillance package with motion sensor capability 24/7hrs. Since that time, we have used citizen science to continue to collect data for research.
The Charles Sturt network is now gigabit internally, including the water tower infrastructure (home to the falcons). Both cameras feed in to a PoE-capable network switch which is then sent out in to the Interweb via a fibre backbone.
