Not really sure if I have mentioned it before on this site, but I have always had an interest in birds. This came back to me in 2023 when I adopted some mixed canaries. For the first year, they lived with me in my room, but it got far too loud and messy.
This led to me buying them a smaller aviary in summer 2024, which they lived in for about two years. It was fine, decently built, but lacked the space that birds need the space to fly around in. It wasn’t fair to them and so I built them a new one.
My dad had this old greenhouse he built last summer – basically a wooden frame bolted to our shared side of the fence with some plastic panelling for weather proofing. Turns out, it did not make a good greenhouse and so it sat abandoned, filled with old plantpots and dirt. I was toying with the idea of buying vs building a new one – we already had a good frame with the old greenhouse and so in spring of this year, I spent 3 weekends pulling the plastic panels out, replacing them with mesh wire and turning it into an aviary.
For something made out of old existing bits of wood, a 5-meter roll of wire mesh and some plastic panelling, it’s pretty good. The sides are solid so that the wind does not reach the birds; the back panel is a fence with another piece of plywood on top for insulation and protection; and the top is plastic panelling, which prevents water from getting into the aviary. Another nice touch is the magnetic screen door, which snaps shut to prevent the birds from getting into the airlock between the aviary and the door entrance. The birds were happier, and so was I.
Project Backgrounds
Since setting up my first BMS (Bird Monitoring System) for my partner, I knew that I would also want this, so I can monitor my birdies from anywhere in the world. I also wanted to put a unique spin on it and learn something new.
I went over to eBay and bought the following.
- Annke 3K PoE Camera
- 50 metres of outdoor rated Cat6 Ethernet Cable
- Ethernet Crimping Kit
The unique spin this time was that I’d be doing everything myself – last time, we bought the camera, ran the cable and got Frigate running on a Pi – this time, I want to learn to patch Ethernet.
Running the Ethernet
One Saturday morning, I decided today was the day. I got out of bed, made a cup of coffee and started unravelling the 50 meters of Ethernet cable. I needed some way of getting the cable from my PoE switch in my server cabinet into the outside world. Luckily, the house I live in has these old mesh grates on the walls for airflow – mine just so happens to feed directly outside. Great for running cables, terrible for when it’s cold.
This was easier said than done. I had to drill one of the holes in the guard out to exactly the diameter of the cable, as it was Cat6, it had a rigid, plastic spline running the entire length of the cable. This made it difficult to push the cable through and took about an hour of feeding the cable through from the inside of my room and then walking outside to finally pull it through.
After this was done, I had about 40 meters of Ethernet successfully pushed through this tiny hole. Now, I had to think of a way to get it outside and towards the aviary. My room actually backs onto a passage that goes from our driveway to the back garden – this made it the perfect place to run the cable through.
I used some clips to secure the cable to this handy piece of wood that runs a decent length of the alleyway. This keeps it out the way and will prevent people from stepping and getting caught on the cable when moving things like lawnmowers through the alley.
Once I had come through the other side and tucked the wire underneath the wood step for the old shed we have, I was able to route it behind some bushes and managed to bury the wire near a planter. This will hopefully hide the cable and protect it from the elements.
The final and easiest step was to run the cable through the side of the aviary. I tried to mount it out of the way so they couldn’t stand or get to the cable easily. Also, these are probably the first canaries in the world to see an Ethernet cable.
Installing the Camera
For the camera, I went with one I already owned and knew worked with Frigate – the Annke 3k PoE Camera. Not bad for £36. It also seems that they have upgraded their model since I bought my other one as this one boasts some AI features.
This comes with everything you need – camera, power and Ethernet connectors, weatherproofing, screws and mounting hardware. Really good camera for all-around usage.
I chose a location where I would want the camera – somewhere so that I could see all of the birds and see them at their food bowls, in their nests, or just flying around. I decided on this spot in the back corner, facing out. Once deciding on the orientation of the camera, I used the included drill template sticker to plan my marks.
These included plugs are really good and keep the camera nice and secure. Without them, the camera would be flimsy and have nowhere to screw into as it is attached to thin plywood.
Preparing the connectors at either end
Without a connector at either end, the cable would be useless. Here is where the most fiddly bit of the project started.
Part of the reason for doing this project DIY-style was that I wanted to learn how to wire Ethernet. Another reason to do it yourself is that pre-made cables can get expensive! It also meant I could trim the cable to the length that I’d need.
I followed this guide and after a few practice runs, felt comfortable doing it from memory. Please watch the video and support the creator – great tutorial.
Anyways, I stripped around 4cm of the protective shroud off from the cable, this exposes the 8 twisted pairs in the cable.
The next step is to untwist each twisted pair – I’d recommend doing them one at a time and then pulling on the cables to get as many kinks out as possible – also side note, isn’t it incredible that these cables are responsible for sharing data all over the world? Like, you plug this into a wall and suddenly, your computer is connected to the rest of the world. So cool.
Now – this is the hard bit. These eight tiny cables need to be arranged in a specific order to be able to handle the sending and receiving of data. Might sound easy, but the cables are super small and have a habbit of jumping around, bending or even snapping if you fatigue them too much.
There are two different types of Ethernet wiring standard, as the video notes, it doesn’t matter which one you use, so long the other end is wired the same way. I followed the video and used the T568B standard.
The order is:
- Striped Orange
- Orange
- Striped Green
- Blue
- Striped Blue
- Green
- Striped Brown
- Brown
After sitting on my bedroom floor hunched over like a prawn for 45 minutes, I finally managed to get all eight wires through the connector and in the right order!
Once in, the last step is to crimp it – this single action chops the excess wires off from the end of the connector and binds the cables to the connector.
1 out of 2 connectors done, it was then time to do this in an aviary so basically, imagine the same process again but this time, with 5 canaries flying around my head as I was trying to get the wires through the connector in the correct order.
This actually only took around 10 minutes so not too bad.
Anyways, here is the camera all mounted in the aviary!
Included in my Ethernet wiring kit was a simple tester – it sends a signal down the wire, and if all is well, all eight wires should light up at the same time. This was scary. At this point, I was about 6 hours into this project, the Ethernet cable had been coiled, pushed through a tight vent, dangled, yanked and if any single one of those cables was damaged, I had to do it all again.
I FaceTimed my sister and asked her to turn the tester on, I stood in the aviary waiting for the lights to flicker to life.
It’s good! The cable passed all tests with flying colours! – finally, I could move on to the next part.
Adding the camera to Frigate
A camera is useless without something to view it through. Luckily, I already have two Frigate instances on my servers – one for LAN only access on Mayflower and one for secure VPN access over Tailscale running on Willow.
All I needed to do was add the new camera to the Frigate configs.
After messing around with a few config settings and dealing with FFMPEG crying because it didn’t support H.265+ encoding, we were in business.
(Melanie, the white canary, has probably never heard of FFMPEG).
Thanks for reading!