Rather than inventing the wheel again, using the Arduino that I planned, I have now gone another route. I discovered that camera trapping is a rather big hobby in the USA and joined a few internet fora to get a few tips. There is a market for PIR sensor control chips for home brew designs, so I ordered a few of the SnapShotSniper II along with a few small pelicases for protection of the camera and sensor. One big disadvantage of the Arduino is it's rather large power consumption. The SSII uses a small lithium battery that is said to last a long time. The control chip of the sensor module is a Picaxe 08M which is programmable. In other words the release and pause times can be set and probably also a threshold number of events for the camera to be triggered like with the Trailmaster 550. I have a few second hand dome ports from underwater houses on the hand that I plan on incorporating as I would like to use fisheye lenses. Lastly, I need to decide on a way of fastening the pelicases to tripod heads.
