Today we are checking out something a little different. It’s a birdfeeder with a security camera… or a security camera with a bird feeder. Pretty cool idea!

Yes, folks you heard me right, it’s a birdfeeder but they added a wifi security camera so you can watch birds up close on your mobile device. It will even send you notifications when there is activity at the feeder. And get this, the app can identify types of birds and let you know which species is currently at your feeder. Anyways let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The feeder is called Birdfy and from a company called Netvue. It costs about $250 American. I’ll add a link in the description for this model and everything seen here today.

Here’s what we are going to cover in this video.

  1. We’ll start off with a review of everything that’s included.
  2. I’ll test the WiFi range.
  3. Throw a bunch of water at this thing to see how it stands up.
  4. Then we’ll chat about the features and specifications of the camera.

I have some footage to show but this video is more about the features this devices offers, technical specs, how it works and its limitations.

Watch Birds On Your Phone Anywhere, Anytime. NETVUE smart bird feeder with camera can auto-capture & Identify all coming birds, and you will receive real-time notifications of feather visitors via the phone app. This revolutionary smart bird detectiv...
NETVUE by Birdfy AI Smart Bird Feeder with Camera Solar Powered, AI Auto Capture Each Bird Come & Identify 6000+ Bird Species, Cloud Store Bird Videos & Birdwatching On Live, Ideal Gift (Blue) #1
NETVUE by Birdfy AI Smart Bird Feeder with Camera Solar Powered, AI Auto Capture Each Bird Come & Identify 6000+ Bird Species, Cloud Store Bird Videos & Birdwatching On Live, Ideal Gift (Blue) #2
NETVUE by Birdfy AI Smart Bird Feeder with Camera Solar Powered, AI Auto Capture Each Bird Come & Identify 6000+ Bird Species, Cloud Store Bird Videos & Birdwatching On Live, Ideal Gift (Blue) #3
NETVUE by Birdfy AI Smart Bird Feeder with Camera Solar Powered, AI Auto Capture Each Bird Come & Identify 6000+ Bird Species, Cloud Store Bird Videos & Birdwatching On Live, Ideal Gift (Blue) #4
NETVUE by Birdfy AI Smart Bird Feeder with Camera Solar Powered, AI Auto Capture Each Bird Come & Identify 6000+ Bird Species, Cloud Store Bird Videos & Birdwatching On Live, Ideal Gift (Blue) #5
NETVUE by Birdfy AI Smart Bird Feeder with Camera Solar Powered, AI Auto Capture Each Bird Come & Identify 6000+ Bird Species, Cloud Store Bird Videos & Birdwatching On Live, Ideal Gift (Blue)
Available for Amazon Prime $279.99 $249.99
Watch Birds On Your Phone Anywhere, Anytime. NETVUE smart bird feeder with camera can auto-capture & Identify all coming birds, and you will receive real-time notifications of feather visitors via the phone app. This revolutionary smart bird detectiv... read more
(as of November 21, 2024 00:32 GMT -06:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Unboxing

  1. Right off the bat we have a 5-volt DC solar panel. The camera in the feeder is battery operated and the solar panel will help keep the battery power levels topped up. The mount attaches to the back of the solar panel and can easily be adjusted for best positioning to capture the most sunlight. The panel is impressively thin but very sturdy with a 3-meter-long cable (almost 10 feet).
  2. Next, we have a Velcro strap to attached the feeder to a tree or some surface you don’t want to damage with screws. It kind of looks like a belt. Hmmm, that gives me an idea. So yeah, technically yes you can wear the bird feeder as a belt. Now in this location I wouldn’t want to damage my tire with screws, so the Velcro belt is a great option. Moving on to more serious locations, here is how I would attach it to a tree, pretty straight forward. And here we have a fence, but because the vinyl post is square, the belt is not very secure. To fix this, I need to slide in a wedge and that makes it much more stable.
  3. A drill template, so we know where we need to drill holes for the mounting bracket.
  4. This is the mount itself. Very sturdy piece of metal here. I’m quite impressed with how thick this metal is. Here’s how it works works. Slide it into the channel on the bottom of the feeder. There is a little piece of plastic that secures it to the base. To release it, pull the plastic tab and slide the feeder off. Since the attachment point is circular in shape, the feeder can swivel on the mount. Here is a look of how it functions when I setup the camera outside. After using it outside, I did notice a little rust forming under the mount. Something to keep an eye on.
  5. We also have this tripod connector. It also slides onto the bottom of the feeder but it’s a little large and doesn’t fit any of my tripods, so I won’t be using this piece.
  6. Next is the user manual, which is very well written and walks you through all the setup and install steps in multiple languages.
  7. This is the feeder’s cover to protect the food from rain and to give a little shade. Let’s run outside and look at how it protects the camera and protects the bird seed from rain. Not too bad. And here is a look at how it protects from snow. We had a lot of snow and wind, so the food is covered up but the camera is not, so I guess it did its job. And here in fast forward, larger birds don’t mind the snow and can still access the food just fine.
  8. Here we have the perch for the birdies to stand on while they enjoy their snack. I’ll show how that’s installed here in a minute.
  9. Up next, we have included these pretty impressive mounting screws. I’ll probably use my own, but this is some heavy-duty hardware.
  10. Now, let’s look at the feeder. There are slits in the bottom of the feeder to allow any rain water to drain, so your bird feeder doesn’t turn into a bird bath. These seem to work quite well. This will also allows airflow so the food will have an opportunity to dry once the rain stops.
  11. As you may have guessed, the back half of the feeder works as a hopper and holds the bird food.
  12. Right in the middle of the feeder, we have the camera which can tilt to allow access to the micro-SD card slot on top. We also have the reset button and a power button. I’m going to drop in my 32gig card. The card is used to save any motion footage. I did run into a couple issues when trying to access this footage on the card however. I was able to back out and go back into my stored photos and the problem solved itself. Also on top of the camera, there is also an unused charging port. I think it’s for another type of camera setup. The port is functional if you want to use it with a 5V/1.5A charging cable.
  13. The port that we’ll be using to charge the camera is on the back of the feeder which connects through to the back on the camera. Let me fast forward the removal of this rubber cover. See, that’s where the charging cable enters the camera.

Let’s run outside a do a quick range test and see how this camera performs at 300ft (just over 90m) away from my WiFi access point. The image was pretty pixelated at this point, and I see a weak WiFi message, but still pretty impressive. Make sure to test your install location before mounting the camera in its permanent location.

It’s still winter here but above freezing so, I’m going to throw a bucket of water on this camera to see how it stands up. I normally end with this test just in case I destroy the camera, so I’m hoping for the best here, otherwise this will be the end of this video. So yeah, everything survived and I don’t need to end this video early.

Color night vision: An all-new Starlight Sensor records night time video in full, vivid color. The Starlight Sensor can see full color in environments up to 25x darker than traditional video cameras and the new f/1.6 aperture captures 2x more light. ...
WYZE Cam v3 with Color Night Vision, Wired 1080p HD Indoor/Outdoor Video Camera, 2-Way Audio, Works with Alexa, Google Assistant, and IFTTT #1
WYZE Cam v3 with Color Night Vision, Wired 1080p HD Indoor/Outdoor Video Camera, 2-Way Audio, Works with Alexa, Google Assistant, and IFTTT #2
WYZE Cam v3 with Color Night Vision, Wired 1080p HD Indoor/Outdoor Video Camera, 2-Way Audio, Works with Alexa, Google Assistant, and IFTTT #3
WYZE Cam v3 with Color Night Vision, Wired 1080p HD Indoor/Outdoor Video Camera, 2-Way Audio, Works with Alexa, Google Assistant, and IFTTT
Available for Amazon Prime $35.39
Color night vision: An all-new Starlight Sensor records night time video in full, vivid color. The Starlight Sensor can see full color in environments up to 25x darker than traditional video cameras and the new f/1.6 aperture captures 2x more light. ... read more
(as of November 21, 2024 01:08 GMT -06:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Specifications

  1. Let’s touch on the specs of the camera. It’s an HD camera that captures pictures and video in 1080p resolution and a horizontal viewing angle of 135 degrees, which is pretty wide, in fact, so wide that we’ll see some distortion and vignetting on the corners. For example, here is a sneak peek of some footage. See how the lens is bending the tripod. Also notice how there is darkening in the corners. Not a deal breaker and actually expected when trying to capture a subject in a pretty wide area so close to the camera. As an FYI, they advise not to point the camera towards to sun because it could damage the sensor, cause the lens to fade or turn a little yellow or cloudy. It will also help with your picture quality and prevent birds from looking like silhouettes without much detail. I’ll demo that in my next video.
  2. Here above the camera lens, we have a status light. Here is what each light means and if you don’t like it, there is an option in the app to turn this light off after a few seconds of a status change.
  3. Now above the light we have a mic hole for listening to the birds or any surrounding sounds.
  4. Sliding the camera around, on the back here, we have a speaker so you can talk back to the birds. Here is a quick test.
  5. Here on the camera face we have a mini flash light. Here’s how it looks at night and it allows a white light to turn on and shine on any birds who come by at night. It’s good because, it allows you to see in color but it could frighten away any visitors.
  6. Surrounding the lens, we have the IR night vision lights. They are visible at night with a red dim glow. Here is some footage of me with the IR lights. They light things up at a close range.
  7. The next area I want to draw your attention towards is this part right here. It’s a PIR sensor which is very sensitive to motion and uses very little electricity. As an FYI, the camera is actually off most of the time to save power. The camera is only turned on when you access it through the app or when motion is detected through the PIR sensor. This means you cannot stream the live view continuously to a security software management tool, like Blue Iris or using RTSP. A bunny rabbit passed by the other night and triggered the PIR sensor to wake up the camera. Since it was night, the IR lights turned on as well. The camera analyzed the motion and since it was pretty minute and far away and my sensitivity in the app isn’t set very high, the camera went back to sleep and did not send me an alert. Here is a daytime example with a bird. The bird arrives, the sensor wakes up the camera and it recognizes the motion and sends the notice for birds and then it recognizes the bird as a chickadee, so I get another notice. Here is a sample of the footage, but more footage to come later.
  8. The camera also has an alarm feature, here is a demo of the alarm. And now a demo of flashing light when motion is detected. You can also have both but it’s cool that they can be separated.
  9. I’d also like to make a note about the camera’s operating temperatures. The high is 50 degrees C or 122F. The low is -10 degrees C or 14F. As soon as the temperature hit this cold threshold, it stopped working because the battery cannot hold the charge. Here we are just below that cold threshold and the status light is flashing. I turned the camera back on again and it worked for a second, then I got another connectivity error, because again, the battery has no charge. I tried with both the solar panel and plugging the camera into an outdoor outlet. The camera will not run directly off the USB supplied power; it only runs off the batteries.
  10. Back inside, since we are still setting up there camera here, we need to get it initially charged. I’ll use the included USB Type C cable and plug it into a wall outlet and let it sit for 12 hours.
  11. While it’s charging, here is a quick shot of how to install the cover and the perch.
You will receive (1) 15.4-pound bag with your order. This all season blend will attract a wide variety of wild birds to your backyard year round. This high-quality general feeding blend is made with cut corn, wheat, red milo, white millet, black oil ...
Armstrong Wild Bird Food All Season Bird Seed Blend, 15.4 Pounds - with Cut Corn, Wheat, White & Red Millet, Black Oil Sunflower Seeds for Blue Jays, Dark-Eyed Juncos and Mourning Doves #1
Armstrong Wild Bird Food All Season Bird Seed Blend, 15.4 Pounds - with Cut Corn, Wheat, White & Red Millet, Black Oil Sunflower Seeds for Blue Jays, Dark-Eyed Juncos and Mourning Doves #2
Armstrong Wild Bird Food All Season Bird Seed Blend, 15.4 Pounds - with Cut Corn, Wheat, White & Red Millet, Black Oil Sunflower Seeds for Blue Jays, Dark-Eyed Juncos and Mourning Doves #3
Armstrong Wild Bird Food All Season Bird Seed Blend, 15.4 Pounds - with Cut Corn, Wheat, White & Red Millet, Black Oil Sunflower Seeds for Blue Jays, Dark-Eyed Juncos and Mourning Doves #4
Armstrong Wild Bird Food All Season Bird Seed Blend, 15.4 Pounds - with Cut Corn, Wheat, White & Red Millet, Black Oil Sunflower Seeds for Blue Jays, Dark-Eyed Juncos and Mourning Doves #5
Armstrong Wild Bird Food All Season Bird Seed Blend, 15.4 Pounds - with Cut Corn, Wheat, White & Red Millet, Black Oil Sunflower Seeds for Blue Jays, Dark-Eyed Juncos and Mourning Doves
$21.92 ($1.42 / lb)
You will receive (1) 15.4-pound bag with your order. This all season blend will attract a wide variety of wild birds to your backyard year round. This high-quality general feeding blend is made with cut corn, wheat, red milo, white millet, black oil ... read more
(as of November 21, 2024 00:32 GMT -06:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Alright folks, that covers everything I learned about this birdfeeder and the camera’s specification to date. I continue to gather some pretty awesome and up-close footage and learn all about the Netvue app. The Birdfy feeder has a lot of exciting options. I love the quality and think it’s very well designed and constructed.  I can’t wait to share the footage from a bunch of locations and review with you the app and its challenges. I hope you found this helpful, if so, please give me a thumbs up. Again, links are in the description and don’t forget to subscribe to be notified of up my upcoming Home Tech DIY projects, you can do yourself.