Build Your Own Digital Game Camera
by Dwayne Nelson

Friends and I have built five of these cameras and I am convinced anyone with an inkling of mechanical aptitude can easily build their own digital game camera and save a chunk of change. In this article I will present some of the things we learned along the way to make the job easier should you decide to go the “build it myself” route. I am only going to highlight some steps because things like soldering on a wire to 10the battery case are straight forward and need no special attention. This article is rather lengthy but trust me that the actual building of the game camera is easier than it sounds.

The circuit board and electronics were commercially available products purchased from PixController (www.pixcontroller.com). Since starting this project PixController has come out with a new circuit board that is smaller, provides more camera options, and is cheaper – my kind of deal! We ordered Pelican 1060 plastic waterproof cases from Cases4Less (www.cases4less.com/). We used Olympus D-360L cameras because they were readily available on eBay at a reasonable price and they had a built in RS232 port for connecting to the circuit board. We paid an average of $70 per camera which isn’t bad for a quality 1.3 megapixel camera that at one time retailed for $299. Unless you want to take on the challenge of disassembling a digital camera and doing some fine soldering I recommend staying with a camera that has an RS232 port. Newer cameras have moved onto the faster USB port so one must look for an older model. Be sure to use a camera listed on the PixController website so you know it will be compatible with their circuit board.

After obtaining all the parts it was time to decide the best layout for the parts within the case. Never being one to take the easy approach I must have spent an hour trying to determine what I thought would be the perfect layout. I finally decided the layout shown on the PixController website was fine…okay, so I wasted the first hour! The mounting kit includes flathead machine bolts and nuts for mounting the circuit board. The flathead machine screws work well because they can be countersunk neatly in the back of the plastic case. When deciding where to mount the circuit board we found that a spacing of about 1/8-inch from the front of the case worked well. That spacing allowed enough room for the camera and also provided good support for the camera bottom. A spacing of about 1/8-inch from the Hold the circuit board in place and mark the first hole location. I drilled one hole at a time and put a machine screw in place after drilling each hole. Countersink for the head and put the four machine screws through the case. Rather than use a regular nut and lock washer inside the case I used nylon locknuts to make sure the bolts wouldn’t loosen.

The circuit board has a PIR heat/motion detector that must be mounted an exact distance from a plastic Fresnel lens that gets glued over a hole in the case cover. In order to provide easy adjustment for the circuit board height I again used nylon locknuts and slipped the plastic spacers in place above them. If you decide to leave the plastic spacers out be sure the locknuts don’t touch any of the circuit board “wires.” Place the circuit board on the bolts and adjust the nuts so that the circuit board is about 5/8 inch from the cover – don’t worry about being exact at this time, final adjustment comes later. Now it is time to drill a hole (I believe we used a ¾ or 1-inch hole) in the cover directly over the PIR. I think we tried a different method to locate this hole each time we built another game camera. One method that worked fairly well was to place a roofing nail cut to 5/8-inches in length on top of and centered on the PIR, add a little lipstick to the nail, and close the lid carefully so it marks where to drill the hole. An advantage to this method is that by adjusting the nylon locknuts you get the correct 5/8-inch spacing required from the Fresnel lens to the PIR. A caution is worthwhile here: drill from the inside of the case to the outside. One of our enthusiastic participants, who shall remain un-named, drilled part way through from the inside then to avoid any possible cracking when the bit would break through, closed the case and finished drilling the hole from the outside. The good news is that the hole aligned perfectly with the PIR, the bad news is that with such perfect alignment the drill bit broke the PIR! Luckily I found a replacement on the internet and was able to replace the broken one on the circuit board. I have come to the conclusion the easiest way to correctly locate the PIR hole is to simply drill a ¼-inch hole close to the center of the PIR and then use a Dremel tool to form the hole directly above the PIR. If you don’t have a Dremel tool you can drill multiple holes and connect them with a file. I used that method on the first camera. After all the drilling and filing I convince myself and my wife that I simply HAD to buy a Dremel tool to do it right on the next camera - rationalization is such a good thing!

If you haven’t yet adjusted the height of the PIR to 5/8-inches from the case, this is the time to do that. It is relatively easy to place a straight edge across the hole and measure down to the PIR. Once you have the hole in the case you need to mount the Fresnel lens to the case. It is important that the lens be centered over the PIR. We put a small piece of masking tape on two corners of the lens and taped it over the hole – be sure the side of the lens with ridges is facing the PIR! Even though it is rather opaque, by looking carefully and moving the case around to vary the lighting you will be able to see if the lens is properly centered over the PIR. We used silicone to glue the lens in place and it has worked well. Be careful with this step or you will have silicone all over everything – yep, I know because I did with the first one! After the first camera I gave up trying to get silicone between the lens and the case. I ended up putting a bead of silicone around the lens and that has worked well.

Drill a hole in the front of the case for the on-off switch. Be careful to use the right size drill because the switch is a friction fit. After pushing the switch in the hole put some silicone around the inside to keep the case waterproof. Now mount the battery case. Although not a necessity I glued the battery case onto a “bed” of foam so that it was at the proper height to help hold the camera in place. Insert the RS232 plug into the camera to determine the correct height. Before gluing in the foam and battery case drill the holes for the U-bolts used to fasten the camera to a tree. We used silicone on the inside of the U-bolts to keep moisture out of the case. One of the things we haven’t yet resolved is how to best lock the game camera to the tree to deter those clods who would rather steal than buy or build their game camera. On one camera we mounted the U-bolts on the lid. Of course that requires using a cable or chain that is tight enough to prevent the thief from opening the lid or they will still be able to steal the digital camera. On my camera I welded up a steel rod that hooks around one U-bolt, passes over the face of the game camera and then connects to the other U-bolt with the same padlock I use to secure the game camera to the tree. As with most things, I think the best one can really accomplish is to make stealing it more work than the person is willing to put into the effort – if they really want your game camera they will get it!

The battery cases didn’t like to hold the batteries very firmly so sometimes they wiggled out. We corrected that by gluing some foam on the top of the case so when it closed the batteries were firmly in their holder. Next glue a thin piece of foam to the bottom of the case to hold the camera level. We then siliconed a piece of foam to the left side of the case to firmly push the camera against the battery case. Before drilling holes for the camera lens and flash we scraped off the factory installed rubber coating inside the cover case so we would have a better surface to glue the glass to. It is possible that we wouldn’t have had to do that but we have done so with every camera. Now drill a hole in the case top to align with the camera lens. It surprised us how large this hole must be to avoid the case interfering with the photo. We ended up with about a 1-inch hole. I again recommend just drilling a ¼-inch or so hole and using a Dremel tool to enlarge the hole directly over the camera lens. I don’t know if it is critical but the Before using silicone to mount glass over the camera lens hole you might want to give your camera a trial run to make sure you have a full frame photo. One of my cameras still rounds off the top two corners of the photo. No big thing for me but it might just drive you nuts. Next cut a rectangular hole to align with the camera flash. Here I also recommend start with a small hole and enlarged it with the Dremel tool.

Once you have the two camera holes in place you can mount the glass pieces over them with silicone. We placed the glass in position inside the case and simply ran a bead around the glass to secure it to the case. Initially we used the microscope slide lenses provided by PixController but found out they are too easily broken. We then cut our own glass pieces from an old window I had in the garage. You can also go to almost any hardware store and have them cut you some glass pieces about 1 ½ inches square for the camera lens and about 1 ½ x ¾ or maybe 1 ½ x 1 for the flash. The size isn’t critical; it just has to cover the holes. I used a glass cutter to remove one corner off each piece of glass where they come close together to enable a better silicone bond. Now, all that remains is to glue a small piece of foam around the flash or the camera lens, or even both, to ensure that the light from the flash doesn’t “bleed” into your photo.

There, wasn’t that simple? ? Again, I think building the game camera is actually easier than reading all this. If you have any questions feel free to email me at:
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Good luck with your new game camera!