LPRS Radio Modules control ITV's cat camera

The programme was commissioned to study the psychology of cats and was made on location at a farm in Scotland. The filming of wild cats required “cat cam” cameras to be set up and left unattended for many hours. With only one hour of filming time available on the cameras, a system was required to turn the cameras on only when cats were present. An infrared beam detector was used at the entrance to a barn which, when triggered by a cat entering the doorway, activated the camera using easy-Radio modules. A wireless solution was chosen as the locations of both camera and detector were difficult to access, a great distance apart and running a cable around the barn would have been difficult and had health and safety issues. The module used in this project was LPRS’ transceiver ER400TRS-02.

Designer, Jeff Bird of ITV Technical Services, comments;”I have had experience of using LPRS’s easy-Radio in the past and I knew straight away it would be the answer to this problem. I just needed to write some software to control the VTR and the protocol for the easy-Radio interface to the micro-controller was really simple. All the hard work is already done in the LPRS modules. The best thing about easy-Radio is that all data received is good data or there is just no data at all and then you know to send the message again. I designed the system to be polled every 20mS to give good responsiveness.”

Barry Gillibrand, Managing Director of LPRS comments;” This is a typical easy-Radio solution to a unique control requirement. easy-Radio provides an out-of-the-box and stress-free solution to replacing cable connections with short-range wireless modules. Our software is simple and easy to use and ensures reliable, error free wireless communication.”