Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Wildlife Management Getting ready for spring duck flight

Hello PB family. Just wanted to check in, and share a little activity from our central Iowa pond. Besides doing a little hard water fishing during winter, I use the ice cap to work on my wood duck boxes. As some of you may recall from past posts here, I have several wood duck boxes (both wooden and plastic) and have one box with a camera in it. I've shared a live stream of that box some years on YouTube. I've always wanted to upgrade my camera setup to wireless, and finally figured out how to do it. My first camera ran off an ethernet connect camera, with power running over the ethernet cable. That box was close to shore and my house so I was able to shallow trench in the waterproof cable to the edge of the pond and then along the bottom and up the pole in the duck house. I did that on the ice several years ago. Amazingly, it worked! We had a blast learning about what goes on inside a wood duck nest box, when the first egg is laid, what goes on during brooding and then watching hatch out and jump out (which occurs in one 24 hr period about 30 days after she begins full time egg sitting). All good stuff. But I have 5 other boxes on the water and one on shore, and always wished I could see what went on in all of them (it's pretty addictive once you see what's happening in there). So may plan was to install a long range wi-fi access point on the roof of my house (i.e. an antenna that broadcasts wi-fi signal over my whole property), and then create/find wi-fi cameras in the other boxes. Access points are common hardware and I found and installed that last year. I get up to 75 Mbps all over my property now (out to about 600 meters from the house). Check. Then I began trying to find the pieces to put together a wireless camera setup. I tried building a setup with a camera from the same company I had used initially with ethernet. While they did have a wi-fi camera, I would have to supply my own power source and a way to connect it to the camera. It also had a long range antenna, but needed wires and connections. Whole setup got bulky and complicated and expensive dang quick. Plus, the boss lady outvoted me in committee at our annual 'state of the pond's budget' meeting. Then I went looking for a camera with all my wish list needs already manufactured. I was hoping some smart engineer had already made what I needed. Bingo! While it was a setup for a wi-fi solar bird feeder camera, it was exactly what I needed! Aaaand, it was cheap! I get them for ~ $50 on-line when on sale. All I had to do was carefully deconstruct it out of the bird feeder and make a simple attachment bracket and I was in business! I will show some pictures so you get the gist. I would be happy to share specifics if you message me. I don't want to shill for any products that aren't supporting the forum directly. The only draw back so far is, the app to view the cameras only works on your smart phone. They haven't made a desk top version of their app, so I haven't been able to set up a live stream...yet. I keep sending e-mails to them in hopes they'll put out a desktop app one of these days. There's probably a work around, but my computer and networking skills are slim and none, and slim's on a diet.
Here's a few photos. I"ll share some stills and short video's later this spring after the ducks arrive. The first flight has historically been within 3-5 days of ice off. When the ice goes off, somehow the ducks know. Must be on social media? Facebook? Quacker?? (like twitter, but for ducks..)









Off season tenant, Eastern screech owl (he's about the size of pop can):