Anyway is it possible to use an Rf motion detector and base to trigger a trail camera as in replacing the cameras on board PIR sensor , I know this is a very basic question to some of you but I would appreciate any help steering me in the right direction.
Hi Macka,
Interesting application!
The PIR detection side is easy. However you should note that you may need to tweak the PIR sensitivity to get motion detected at a longer distance and even so you might not get a long range, these are intended for indoors in general where there's a steady infrared heat map that doesn't change with wind and other factors that might trigger motion. Otherwise you might get false positives which could be OK in your case but you'd want to limit that to a minimum.
The camera side .. would need to have some kind of trigger mechanism that wakes it up and snaps a photo. A receiving Moteino that sleeps everything but the radio in RX mode (to receive a SNAP command from the Motion Moteino) could do that if your camera has some kind of digital triggering mechanism.
Then I assume your camera would have its own battery, and the Moteino that triggers it would have another battery as well. A Moteino with radio in RX (listen) mode will take about 15mA, so the battery capacity is the only limiter to how long it will last. Perhaps you could use a solar charger to give that battery a boost during the day, but that would be an enhancement i'd be focusing only after you get it working without it.
It's an ambitious project especially if you're new at "building houses" but it could be very rewarding if you ever do catch the b******s on camera.
To give you more guidance we would need more details about the camera side and how it could be triggered.
Also take a look at
this other project that used PIRs to detect a real burglary.
