Tag: Red Rover

Wednesday (01-December-2021) — New Jersey

Autumn Backyard Nature in New Jersey.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Black-capped Chickadee, White-breasted Nuthatch, House Finch, Dark-eyed Junco.



Birds of the day. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

Little Planet Time-lapse Videos. Red Rover using leaf vacuum and moving some black mulch. Last week I was not able to complete the autumn annual leaf cleanup with the John Deere mower and DR Power leaf vacuum. I attached a leaf vacuum adapter to Red Rover’s mower deck, but the 8″ diameter flexible hose to connect the mower deck adapter to the leaf vacuum was too short. I ordered an 8″ x 8′ flexible hose from McMaster Sunday night, and it was delivered Monday evening. I attached the new hose — it was just barely long enough. Once attached, I did the leaf cleanup. It took some adjustments getting the mower deck height on Red Rover right. I wanted to collect the leaves without cutting too much grass. I had to stop a couple of times to clear the vacuum hose plugged with leaves and grass clippings. When the leaf collection bag was full, I dumped the leaves in a temporary mulch heap. The cart was too full (and too heavy to dump by myself), but this time I remembered I could pull the long hinge pin and remove the collection bag cover and dump the contents. A lot easier than having to use Red Rover with the front forks. For the second time-lapse video, I moved some more of the black mulch, and finished the leaf collection. Most of the trees have dumped all of their leaves, so probably only need to do one more collection when the Sycamore tree drops the last of the leaves.

Daily Electric Energy Used (63.6 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (29.8 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Sunny. Geothermal HVAC heating the house. Deficit of 33.8 kWh.

Monday (29-November-2021) — New Jersey

Autumn Backyard Nature in New Jersey.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Blue Jay, House Finch.


Birds of the day. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

Little Planet Time-lapse Videos. Continuing to evaluate the LabPano Pilot EE 360 camera. I found that I can do longer shoots using an external USB-C battery pack. It just needs to be one that can do fast charging. The first time-lapse little planet video was changing the AAA batteries in the solar powered Trolls.
Five of the batteries that were removed, wouldn’t take a charge. With the new batteries, three of the Trolls LED lights were on during the day. They are supposed to charge the batteries when it is light out, and only light up when it gets dark out. All but one of the Trolls lights went on when it got dark out, and they were still on at midnight. Will continue to monitor if they continue to charge during the shorter days, and now that the temperature is dropping below freezing every night.

For the next video, the camera was mounted on Red Rover, and on a tripod in the field. Today’s main project was to prepare and seed some of the back sections. A couple of months ago, the sections were fertilized, rototilled, and then covered with black agricultural fabric (to kill germinating weeds). The wildflower seed vendor recommended to sow the seeds after the first few freezes. Apparently, some seeds germinate better if they are out for some time in the cold. (Just hope the birds and mice don’t eat all of the seeds). Today, the black agricultural fabric was removed, the plot leveled with a drag harrow, seeds sowed, then the seeds pressed down with a water-filled drum roller. The LabPano Pilot EE 360 camera was set for a 20x 4K time-lapse video. The white balance and exposure were set to Auto. In the time-lapse video you can see problems with the white balance and exposure. The lighting conditions kept changing from sunny to cloudy.

Daily Electric Energy Used (69.1 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (24.5 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Cloudy and cold. Geothermal HVAC heating the house. Deficit of 44.6 kWh.

Wednesday (24-November-2021) — New Jersey

Working on RedRover and New 360 Camera.

Previously, I had to remove the mower deck on the John Deere lawn tractor. I still have lots of fallen autumn leaves that need attention. I decided to attach a leaf vacuum adapter to Red Rover. I recorded the project as a time-lapse video using a Labpano Lab Pilot One EE 360 camera. This camera does not have interval photo mode, but does have a time-lapse mode. Rather than two fish-eye lenses, it uses four 185° wide-angle lenses. The images are combined and processed in-camera to an equirectangular view (up to 8K, 7680×3840). The camera has a relatively large battery that took images for ~80 minutes. I had an external USB-C battery attached, but it didn’t seem to continue to provide power while the camera was recording the time-lapse video.

The 47 seconds of the 8K (7680 x 3840) video file was 2.49 GB. The time-lapse setting was 100x (3.3 fps) for the 47 seconds of video which would correspond to ~ 78 minutes of recording. I was not able to use the GoPro FX Reframe plug in for Premiere Pro to convert the 8K equirectangular image into a Little Planet view. First needed to convert the video to a 4K (3840 x 1920) video then process in Premiere Pro with the GoPro FX Reframe plugin. [Note – Next time record the time-lapse video at 4K or 2K].

Daily Electric Energy Used (67.5 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (28.9 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Sunny but cold. Geothermal HVAC heating the house. Deficit of 38.6 kWh.

Friday (19-November-2021) — New Jersey

Autumn Nature in New Jersey, Working Outside and in the Garage.

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: House Finch.

House Finch. (David J Mathre)
House Finch. Image taken with a Leica SL2 camera and 90-280 mm lens. (David J Mathre)

My Little Planet time-lapse video for the day. Finished removing the mower deck from the John Deere lawn tractor. Removed the agri-fabric and electric fence wire caught in the blades. Removed the blades to be sharpened. Hopefully, I will be able to reinstall the mower deck… Removed electric fence wire from the yellow plastic insulators. Completed installing the Tent Box cold weather inner insulation shell.

Daily Electric Energy Used (53.6 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (28.6 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Mostly sunny. Deficit of 25.0 kWh.

Thursday (18-November-2021) — New Jersey

Autumn Day Nature and Working Outside and in the Garage in New Jersey.

Full moon before the lunar eclipse. Unfortunately, a rain storm came through while the eclipse took place.

Full Moon. (David J Mathre)
Full Moon, before the lunar eclipse. Image taken with a Nikon 1 V3 camera and 70-300 mm VR lens. (David J Mathre)

Birds of the day viewed at the birdfeeder and in the backyard: Blue Jay, Black-capped Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, House Finch, Common Grackle.


Birds of the day. Individual images in the slideshow are available in my PhotoShelter Gallery.

My Little Planet time-lapse videos for the day. 1) Red Rover. Moving items, switching from the front loader to forks, adding additional support to the pallets being used to support the tractor implements. 2) Tent Box. Starting to install the inner cold weather lining in the tent box. It got dark before I could finish.

Daily Electric Energy Used (41.7 kWh) from Sense. Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (25.7 kWh) from Sense and SolSystems. Mostly sunny. Deficit of 16.0 kWh.