About one year ago I undertook a new project: to acquire an Eye-Fi wireless card and transmit images from my Wingscapes BirdCam straight to the internet. This process seemed simple enough, and all of the literature suggested this would be "plug-and-play." But it didn't work out that way. It may be that this technology works well under specific circumstances. But it doesn't work here. Not long ago I had a nice chat with a technical support person, who ultimately replaced the card, but the extant problems I reported remain. I can't get the wireless card to talk to my wireless network at any distance. As I write this my BirdCam is a mere nine inches from the router antennas, and for the last half hour the Eye Fi Manager has been searching for the image stored on the BirdCam. Every other wireless device I own talks to this wireless network, and even on another story of the house. And I have had this problem with two separate BirdCams. Conclusion? Eye Fi may be intrinsically incompatible with BirdCam. And enough is enough. I have finally thrown in the towel on this experiment. On to other things. So who's on the feeders now?...
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Eye-Fi Experiment Goes Bust
About one year ago I undertook a new project: to acquire an Eye-Fi wireless card and transmit images from my Wingscapes BirdCam straight to the internet. This process seemed simple enough, and all of the literature suggested this would be "plug-and-play." But it didn't work out that way. It may be that this technology works well under specific circumstances. But it doesn't work here. Not long ago I had a nice chat with a technical support person, who ultimately replaced the card, but the extant problems I reported remain. I can't get the wireless card to talk to my wireless network at any distance. As I write this my BirdCam is a mere nine inches from the router antennas, and for the last half hour the Eye Fi Manager has been searching for the image stored on the BirdCam. Every other wireless device I own talks to this wireless network, and even on another story of the house. And I have had this problem with two separate BirdCams. Conclusion? Eye Fi may be intrinsically incompatible with BirdCam. And enough is enough. I have finally thrown in the towel on this experiment. On to other things. So who's on the feeders now?...
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6 comments:
This would have been SO awesome!
I too have suffered difficulties with my Eye-Fi in the BirdCam. I bought it when it was being sold at a special price along with the purchase of more Picasa web album storage space. I installed the card first in a regular camera (was this my problem?) and immediately began transmitting and receiving my test shots. So far, so good. I then put the card in my 2.0 BirdCam. I had some success initially, but then the whole process seemed to bog down. I didn't know if the problem was the volume of photos the camera was taking (approx. 400/day at times), or what. I seemed stuck between server uploads and camera uploads and finally gave up. My whole intention was to reduce wear and tear on the camera and SD card from putting it in and taking it out twice a day. I also wanted to view my pictures online from my office on the days I wasn't home. And I wanted to avoid that late-night-gee-I-forgot-to-put-the-card-back-in trek into the tangles of my heavily treed yard. I have occasionally gone outside with a flashlight in my mouth to put the card back in, although now I can practically do it with my eyes closed. And I don't like tripping on the tripod legs. At the end of 2009, I bought a new iMac, switching from a PC. So I tried again to start things up with the Eye-Fi on the new computer, but it wanted to continue uploads that were still pending from long ago. I've not called support, so perhaps I will try once more. It seemed like a great idea but I was disappointed.
Kathy,
I'm not sure what tech support will be able to do or even tell you. When I called them in December they tried to be helpful but they had no better ideas on what to do than I did. Replacing the Share card didn't do a thing for me. All I can come up after thought and experiment is that the EyeFi card wants more power than the BirdCam can deliver. Thanks for sharing your experience: it confirms my suspicions about the product. Maybe someday we'll find a way to do what we both aspire to!
David,
I am happy to report that as of this moment, my Eye-Fi card is working in my BirdCam 2.0. I received a general emailing yesterday from Eye-Fi with a message about the new Eye-Fi Center, a standalone manager for the Eye-Fi card. I thought I'd give it a whirl and download it. It's a much nicer interface than the older Eye-Fi Manager web application. I had some initial trouble getting the card and my wireless to "see" each other, but once I remembered I had changed my router password and all is well. I also put fresh batteries in the BirdCam. Within the last 5 minutes, I've had 6 photos upload to my computer and to Picasa from the camera as it sits on the tripod in my back yard. I was also able to delete all previous uploads, of which there were quite a few, so I'm starting fresh.
Now, it remains to be see what happens on the days I get more than 200 pictures, but right now I'm very happy with how it's working. I am especially keen to record the last of the painted buntings here in N. Florida, before they head back to their North Carolina breeding grounds. I keep track of my sightings with the BirdCam and report the data to UNC Wilmington as a citizen member of the Painted Bunting Observer Team. I will be sorry to see my buntings head north, but they'll be back in October.
Kathy,
This is great news! I admire your persistance in solving your conundrum... and I am inspired to drag my EyeFi card out and see if I can duplicate your results. Thanks so much for sharing your success!
David,
Well, my fears about keeping up with the volume of photographs were well-founded. Of the 206 pictures on the BirdCam, 58 managed to get uploaded by 9pm. The last upload was roughly 5 hours later than the time the photo was taken. If I just leave the card in to continue uploading the next day, I can imagine it won't take long for the delay to increase to days rather than a few hours.
I need to tweak my camera settings to cut down the number of pictures - I do get a lot of empty ones and too many of one bird. I just hate to miss a bird that may pop in and out in a matter of seconds. I am also concerned about battery life -- I can imagine constant uploading will drain the batteries; I'm considering an AC adapter.
A tip - when I first tried to get the Eye-Fi card to communicate with my router, I entered the router encryption key but it would not connect. So I removed all security from the router settings, waited a moment, and connected successfully. I then went back in and secured the router, and the card connected the second time with the key. You may want to try the same. Also, when I first inserted my Eye-Fi card into my card reader, I was prompted to update it, which will likely happen if you do the same.
I'm going to work on my camera settings and see if I can get the numbers down a bit. If all else fails, I can use my card on a trip to England with my dad this June!
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