My Naturewatch

My Naturewatch Camera is an inexpensive wildlife camera that we designed for people to make themselves as a way of promoting engagement with nature and digital making. We aligned its development to the interests of the BBC’s Natural History Unit as part of an orchestrated engagement strategy also involving our project website and outreach to social media. Since June 2018, when the BBC featured the camera on one of their Springwatch 2018 broadcasts, over 3,000 cameras have been made by the people using instructions and software from our project website and readily available components including the low-cost Raspberry Pi Zero computer.

The My Naturewatch project was in collaboration with the Design Products Programme at the Royal College of Art.

Click here to launch the My Naturewatch external website or here for a conference paper about the project.

Date: 2018

A photograph of a My Naturewatch camera outside
A photograph of the My Naturewatch Camera web-based interface on a smartphone next to the camera in an outdoors location
A photograph of a My Naturewatch Camera components laid out on a white surface
A photograph of a deer, taken on a My Naturewatch Camera by J. Roberts
Photo by J Roberts
A photograph of a sparrow, taken on a My Naturewatch Camera by Libby Miller
Photo by Libby Miller
A photograph of a rabbit, taken on a My Naturewatch Camera by C. Appleyard
Photo by C Appleyard