I am using the Wyze Cam v3 to try to do a timelapse on azalea seeds. I grow these tiny seeds every year, and this year I decided to try a setup with a timelapse.
So far, this video is the best I have been able to produce:
It is not very good. You can barely see the seedlings.
The first challenge was the focus of the camera at distances about 20 to 30cm from the camera. I positioned the Wyze cam in such a way that I get a full screen view of a seedling tray of about 30 by 40cm. This was not in focus. I saw on youtube that I can open the camera, move the lens, or even replace the lens. Instead, I taped a pair of reading glasses in front of the camera. And that seemed to be a decent solution. Though not the best. I hear maybe Cam v2 or Cam v4 have better focus nearby. But for plant timelapses, Cam v3 without a fix is not usable seedling timelapse of plants. Maybe for larger plants, but even there it can be an issue, I magine.
My second challenge was the flickering. I am now using a capture of once every 20 minutes. But any capture rate I try, because I have an LED grow light that flickers, all my captured snapshots would be at different brightnesses. So the video would flicker. I cannot manually change exposure time or frame rate to solve this.
My solution was to use two independent grow lights, that each flicker differently. And by changing the intensities of both and trying some 20 minute captures, I finally found a setting where I was able to minimize the flickering. And this together with blending the frame rates in post, I was able to get an acceptable image of the seedling tray.
However, over time as the timelapse recorded for about 3 weeks now, the sharpness of the video has become worse and worse. Gradually, the entire image becomes more hazy. I turned everything off, let the grow tent and the lights cool, did a reset on the Wyze cam. I cleaned the glasses with ethanol wipes. But I cannot clean the lens of the Wyze Cam itself without moving it. I tried to adjust the brightness, thinking that maybe the LEDs became brighter and more efficient over time. Turning one LED down in brightness, improved the expore of the shot a bit, but now I have worse flickering again.
Then there is the biological issues. The seeds I used germinated less well than anticipated. I used substrate instead of peat to prevent algae growth and to have less bugs and critters. I used 24 hour days because the nighttime IR hours are just not helpful to a good video. Since the seedlings grow quite slow, I need a serious speedup. And having many night periods make the video not pleasing to watch. Of course, I can cut out all the night hours in my final video. I had the bad luck of having very few seeds germinate exactly in the center of my video. And the seedlings are growing much slower than normally. And then I also have critters moving around.
Not sure how to fix the haziness. I changed the lights so I will have a night period now. Maybe the seedlings prefer that. I am considering starting over with new seeds. Maybe putting the entire tray in the freezer for a week to try to kill every invertebrate in the soil. But, I also need to find a solution to the haziness issue. I need to disassemble the setup to clean the actual lens. But I don’t know why it would get dirty. I need the new setup to record properly for several months without me having to move anything.
Maybe there are some other people here with seed timelapse experience using Wyze
