Herries School - Beetle Blog

Welcome to our Stag Beetle project page. It is here that we discuss this fascinating eco project in detail and share some of our findings with other schools, organisations and you; our website readers!

We are starting to keep a 'blog' - an online account of everything beetle-like that occurs at our upper or lower log piles. Including any events that help us to understand these insects a little better. Take me to the blog!

Our network camera is an integral part of the project now - allowing us to monitor events live and as they happen. We can also record these events and make them available to others who share our camera over the internet or those who regularly review this page for our latest notes and video clips.

Please return to this page regularly to find out what we have discovered.

The Herries School Beetle Bloggers.

Our latest video clip ...

hover over the image and click the play button.

Our short video clips are taken directly from footage recorded by our network camera.

We search for interesting events and then export them from our main database to a short video file suitable for viewing across the internet.

We'll make sure our website visitors don't miss a thing - if something special occurs, we will create a clip and get it on to the web site as quickly as possible.

You might witness larva movement, male stag beetle's fighting over females or even (heaven forbid) predators infiltrating our wood piles in search of a tasty stag beetle snack.

The Blog...

Date	Time	Log Pile	Comment
03/07/06	13:00	Lower	Stag beetle found eaten on lawn
29/06/06	19:15	Lower	Prolific hatching in warm evening summer sunshine
28/06/06	08:30	Lower	Stop press! Pesky vole seen eating larva
12/06/06	15:45	Upper	Larvae on manouevres
08/06/06	14:00	Lower	Female beetle displays mandible
08/06/06	12:15	Upper	Lucanus Cervus is spotted amongst the logs
02/06/06	15:00	Upper	Empty cocoon found... but no larva
01/06/06	12:00	Upper	Exuvia found... but no larva

About the Camera & Software...

Our school camera is a type of device known as a 'network camera'. Essentially these are excellent, new-technology cameras that incorporate computing power - allowing them to become part of our school IT network and, further, to be shared by anyone across the internet.

The Axis 214 camera has been specially mounted within a dome and is designed to live on a tripod outdoors - so that we may move it around between various projects. Of course its primary role is to monitor our beetles and their habitat. If necessary the camera could be wireless and run from batteries and solar or wind power.

The live images can be viewed from any of the computers around the school - and we can control it using the mouse/keyboard on any of these machines; moving it left and right, up and down and zooming right in for great detail. We can even display the images onto our interactive whiteboards in the classrooms. If we allow access, anyone else can use it in exactly the same way - even if they are on the other side of the world.

We can also record the images onto one of our classroom computers using the excellent Milestone XProtect surveillance software. We can quickly search for events, print or even export clips to a CD or file for our website bulletins. Brilliant!

For anyone wishing to know a little more, please contact InCam. www.incam.co.uk or info@incam.co.uk. Telephone 01329 823020.

The Herries School Network camera. Proudly sponsored by
Communications Development Company (CDC) Jordan
InCam Digital Surveillance Limited, Hampshire, UK.

www.axis.com
www.milestonesys.com