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MillimeterBird Cam
Dec 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Michael Goldman
The upcoming documentary Raptor Force, part of the PBS Nature series, features footage captured using miniature cameras mounted on large hawks as they soar and dive.
Producers turned to Rob McIntyre, a falconer and engineer, to develop a tiny camera that could be safely mounted onto trained falcons, eagles, hawks, and owls. He developed a 3oz. device that included a wide-angle, 3.2mm lens, a special housing and harness worn between the bird's wings, a 2.4GHz radio transmitter, and a battery pack. The system transmits a radio signal to a small wireless receiver connected to a Sony clamshell MiniDV recorder. McIntyre first tested the system on larger birds, but evolved it for use on a smaller, faster peregrine falcon.
“That's a 1lb. bird capable of pulling in excess of 20 Gs when it is pulling out of a dive,” McIntyre says, “so you don't want to add a lot of weight, or you will damage the bird and the equipment.”
McIntyre says, “I smashed [several standard lipstick cameras], tore them apart, drilled them, filed edges, took off screws, and re-soldered them. The most important thing was to reduce the weight while retaining the 1/3in. Sony CCD — a nice, small chip that gave us great image capture. I chose the Sony CCD because it did not distort when I decoupled it from the original mount, and it also passed the test when I dropped the camera from 20ft.”
McIntyre then shrink-wrapped the camera components together using beeswax and a heat-sensitive film wrap. Finally, he built the harness out of, of all things, bra straps. “It was elastic, durable, adjustable for different birds, and had neat hooks to tie it all onto the birds safely,” he chuckles.
