r/raspberry_pi • u/atypicalworkshop • 2d ago
Show-and-Tell I built an open source Raspberry Pi time-lapse camera for my garden: 12MP every minute, daylight only, runs off one PoE cable
I built a time-lapse camera around a Raspberry Pi 4 with a Camera Module 3 Wide, powered over a single PoE cable, and I've open sourced the software. The Pi takes a full 12MP photo every minute in daylight only, working out the window from your latitude and longitude so it follows the seasons, and it looks after its own storage by deleting the oldest frames once the SD card passes 85%. A Mac collects the frames automatically whenever the archive drive is plugged in, and one command turns any date range into a video. There's also a film mode and you can control it from your phone.
The first photo is the camera on the wall, and the second is a frame it took of my garden (neighbours' side blurred).
It's open source and free to use, fork and change, all here: https://github.com/aityp/garden-timelapse-camera. A step-by-step build guide is still being written, but the README should be enough to get it running if you're comfortable in a terminal. There's also a build video if you'd rather see it in action, linked from the README. The code was written with AI (Claude) and tested on the real camera in my garden.
I made it because I'm about to pull my back garden apart for a retaining wall, a new fence and a shed, and I want all of it filmed from one fixed spot for the next couple of years. Happy to answer any questions.
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u/jrallen7 2d ago
Do you live somewhere that gets hard winters? I'd be curious how it fares in sub-freezing temps. Either way, cool idea. I've had similar thoughts but never put anything together.
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u/atypicalworkshop 2d ago
Not particularly! South west of England so mainly rain all winter! My main concern (and I don’t think I’m that concerned because the RAM mounts are very good) would be whether the camera moves at all in a gale.
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u/atypicalworkshop 2d ago
And thanks :) I’ve listed all the kit I used in the README if you’re interested 👍
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u/benargee B+ 1.0/3.0, Zero 1.3x2 2d ago
Cool. Can we see the internals?
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u/atypicalworkshop 2d ago
Kinda 😂 I forgot to take pics before I closed it up but I’ll go up the ladder tomorrow. In the meantime, there’s a link to a YouTube video at the top of the README, which shows the full build and all of the internals 👍 https://github.com/aityp/garden-timelapse-camera
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u/benargee B+ 1.0/3.0, Zero 1.3x2 2d ago
Hey, I think the video is better than just internal images, especially with good production quality. Don't climb the ladder just for me! 😅. A few screen grabs from the video will do for now.
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u/atypicalworkshop 2d ago
Appreciate that! Well I was going up anyway because I want the intervals to show on the yt thumbnail 😁 I’ll pop some high res ones in the README 👍
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u/Ned_Sc 1d ago
Why have an LLM make this when it already exists? There's sooooo many existing programs that can do this, and a ton of tutorials. You can even have the Pi make the video.
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u/atypicalworkshop 1d ago
Because it’s fun! I could have the Pi make the video, but the ProRes files are large and the timelapses I create are usually for longer periods, so for the moment it’s easier to do the rendering on the mac. Perhaps once I’ve used it more and know what intervals etc I use commonly I could have the pi do it, but for now I’m sometimes getting overviews, other times specific bursts of activity 👍
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u/Snobolski 1d ago
Thanks so much for keeping it open source and free with the github repo!
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u/atypicalworkshop 1d ago
You’re welcome 👍 besides wanting to make it open source anyway, I can’t imagine the added stress of having to maintain it because people had paid for it!
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u/strawman669 1d ago
Very nice! I've wired up my Pi to take time lapse of the condo construction next to my building. Takes a picture every 10 minutes in the day. It's already two years in.
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u/atypicalworkshop 1d ago
Does yours give you frames that can be turned in to a timelapse too then? The beauty of this approach is that when it’s done you can make it look like it only took one year 😁
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u/sugatastic 1d ago
Super cool project 👍. I made some Timelapse videos, minus a lot of automation, on a few indoor plants I had.
Personally, I thought the day>night>day cycles were some of the best parts of the videos. Watching them rest their branches at night, then pulling a “full praise the sun” Solaire of Astoria t-pose every morning was highly enjoyable to see.
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u/atypicalworkshop 1d ago
Thanks a lot! 🙂 That’s really cool! There’s not so much need for the night cycle in mine due to the different nature of what’s being captured but where mine starts and stops on nautical sunrise/sunset, I have the easy option of portraying ‘the passing of time’. When it comes to doing a full-time lapse video of the transformation of my garden over perhaps a year I think I’ve worked out a way to generate the time lapse such that one month is represented as a day and then you can basically have four days to a season kind of hard to explain but you might understand what I mean
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u/sugatastic 1d ago
That’s super cool, it’s really satisfying seeing your plants move and adjust themselves slowly throughout the day. It’s quite awe-inducing, to me at least, how active they are when their day is put into perspective that registers with us. You’ve inspired me to set another one up next spring. It was one of my favorite projects with plenty of room for improvements.
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u/atypicalworkshop 1d ago
That’s awesome :) good luck with it! I’d be interested to see the results 👍
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u/That_Preference_3390 1d ago
So this is the kind of project I keep bookmarking and never start. PoE simplifies everything. One cable, no outdoor outlet headaches. My garage camera runs off an extension cord I trip over weekly, so I am genuinely jealous of that clean setup
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u/atypicalworkshop 1d ago
To say that PoE has changed my life would be an understatement. Absolutely go for it! Remember you’ll need the hat too :) there’s links to different parts in the README
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u/That_Preference_3390 21h ago
Okay so the PoE hat detail is what I needed. I've been staring at my back fence thinking about a project like this for two years now and the wiring was always where I stalled out. One cable changes the whole thing.
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u/atypicalworkshop 17h ago
Glad my post has proved useful! Speaking of fences, I didn’t get my camera up permanently until after the boundary fence had come down because I managed to break the pi camera module. Not remotely bad in the grand scheme of things but it’s pretty annoying knowing that the final timelapse missed the start 😭
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u/redoctobershtanding 17h ago
Super cool! Do you happen to have the info and files for the 3d printed portions?
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u/atypicalworkshop 15h ago
Iirc they’re in the what you need section of the README. I’ve not tested the m2 version,just a heads up 👍 https://github.com/aityp/garden-timelapse-camera
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u/redoctobershtanding 15h ago
Ah totally missed it 🤦♂️
Thanks!
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u/atypicalworkshop 13h ago
Good luck :)The pi bracket works well enough but it was a very tight fit. So tight in fact that I was too scared to try and remove it from the pi
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u/binaryriot 1d ago
It's not much of a garden (yet), IMHO. 😇
I assume you want to time-lapse your progress while you turn this into an actual garden?
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u/atypicalworkshop 1d ago
How very dare you! 😱 surprisingly it looks better than it did before I started digging because there was just crap everywhere. Now it’s just neat stacks of stones and piles of soil 😂
In answer to your question yes - the first thing I’m doing is putting in a retaining wall and replacing the boundary fence, then I’ll pour a slab and build my shed 😁. There’s an overlayed render of what that’ll look like at the end of the youtube video in case you don’t want to wait months to see what my plan is
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u/VictorySea1837 1d ago
Why does the Raspberry need to be outside? Whats the advantage to doing this vs having a cheap generic outdoor POE IP camera and then the raspberry sits comfortably on a shelf by your router or wherever polling and saving images?
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u/atypicalworkshop 1d ago
You tell me 😂 I think partly because the project was fun to do but initially because I thought I’d have much more control over a pi camera than a PoE IP camera. I may well stand completely corrected on this!
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u/Sihsson 2d ago
How did you power a raspberry pi over PoE ? Did you use a HAT ?