Post Syndicated from Liz Upton original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/batinator-spot-bats/
Even you live somewhere heavily endowed with bats, you’ve probably never had a good look at one on the wing. Bats fly so fast – in poor lighting conditions – that if you’re lucky you’ll get a glimpse of something flashing by out of the corner of your eye, but usually you won’t even notice they’re there.
Enter the Batinator.
The Batinator is a portable Raspberry Pi device with an Pi NoIR camera board and a big array of IR lights to illuminate the subject, which means it can see in the infra-red spectrum. Martin Mander has set it up to record at 90 frames per second – enough to capture the very fast flappings of your neighbourhood bats in slow-mo. And it’s powered by a recycled 12v rechargeable drill bat-tery, which makes it look like some sort of police hand-held radar bat scanner. (Which it is not.)
Here’s the Batinator in action (bats start doing bat stuff at about 2:40):
The Raspberry Pi Batinator
The Batinator is a portable Raspberry Pi that uses a PinoIR (No Infrared Filter) camera module to record video in the dark at 90 frames per second, 640×480 resolution. It features a 48 LED illuminator lamp on top and the power is provided by a 12v rechargeable drill battery.
Martin’s made a full writeup available on Instructables so you can make your own, along with some video he’s taken with the same setup of a lightning storm – it turns out that the same technology that’s great for bat-spotting is also great for storm-filming. He’ll walk you through the equipment he’s built, as well as through building your own bat lure, which involves soaking your socks in beer and hanging them from a line to attract tasty, tasty moths.
Thanks Martin – let us know if you take more footage!
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