With all the new construction at work, I’ve been asked to equip more web cameras for time lapse shots of the progress. At the end, we will stitch the pictures together into a fast time lapse movie of the building. Not wanting to go with IP cameras again since it will require all of the complicated mounting, running power and ethernet to the sites (usually on the roof!) and the external computer required to capture the images and save them, I looked for an alternative.
Enter, the Wingscapes Plantcam which promises to alleviate all of those problems. This is a time lapse digital camera in a rugged outdoor ready housing. It has an SD card slot to store the images and a selectable interval from every 30 seconds to once per day so it’s very flexible. It also includes a tape measure to measure the distance to close subjects (as close as 11 inches!) for focusing. For aiming, there’s a built in viewfinder and a laser so you know exactly where the camera is pointing. The box includes a articulating arm mount, bungee cords and a strap for nearly all mounting situations. It even includes batteries! The camera quality is quite good (4 megapixels) for a camera this cheap (about $69 from Amazon.com with free shipping!). It’s meant for capturing plant growth but there’s nothing preventing you from using this for just anything you need to compress time.