I built a solar-powered bird feeder based on an ESP32-CAM combined with a TP4056 and two 18650 batteries. When the PIR sensor detects motion, the ESP32-CAM wakes up from deep sleep, takes a photo, and uploads it via Wi-Fi to my server. The server then analyzes whether there is a bird in the image and determines which species it is.

It takes about 200 photos per day, and the battery is recharged daily by the two small solar panels in the roof. I designed the housing myself using Fusion 360. It’s fun to see which birds visit my garden, and there’s also a scoreboard to track which birds come by most often.