Night

Too dark to see: back at first lightLast seen 12 h ago, on the high wire and the top wireVisits today7▼ 6 on WedOn camera today3 min 19 sOther things moved617Checker runningv4Rolled back 22 Octv9 → v4Teacher agrees91%All time94 visits, 1 h 14 minFavourite spotPole 59%Cam time11:17 PM

One squirrel, five wires, and a Raspberry Pi learning to tell him from the leaves.

A camera in a window watches a power pole all day. Everything that moves gets a box; a small model on the Pi decides whether the box is him, and every night the Pi retrains that model on what it got wrong. Nothing is streamed live: this page shows what the camera has worked out, and blurred clips of his visits.

01 Caught on camera

His visits, with what the camera saw

Up the pole, and a seat on top

Along the high wire, up the pole, and onto the very top.

Tue 20 Oct, 1:01 PM · 30 s · surest: 100%

Show the tracker’s boxes

02 How the camera sees him

From a moving box to “that’s him”

01
Camera
A USB webcam in a window, watching all day.
1280×720 · 30 fps
02
Tracker
A box around anything that moves on the pole or the wires.
3,492 things since 16 Oct
03
Checker
A small image model on the Pi decides, twice a second: is the box him?
YOLO11n · v4
04
Teacher
A bigger vision model on a PC double-checks the Pi.
19,931 crops judged
05
Reviews
Aarav, or Claude looking at the frames, settles the close calls the two disagree on.
94 of 94 visits checked
06
Retrain
Every night, on the Pi, from everything labeled so far.
9 retrains · back on v4

The tracker keeps a box around everything that moves. The checker is shown a small crop around each box, about 100 pixels across, and scores it.

100%him, on the high wire
1%leaves, rightly ignored
91%a bush it called him

On the Pi: Tracking, the checker and the nightly retrain all run on a Raspberry Pi 5.
A teacher, not a label factory: A bigger model on a PC double-checks the Pi, and the disagreements come to Aarav, or to Claude.
Gated: A new checker only goes live if it beats the old one on crops neither has seen.

03 Today, on the pole and the wires

Where he went

9:09 AM24 s
10:05 AM41 s
10:07 AM23 s
10:09 AM27 s
10:22 AM26 s
10:59 AM11 s
11:44 AM49 s

Each line is one visit, drawn from the box the camera kept around him; the latest is the boldest. The shaded bands are where the camera looks for him.

The squirrel of interest, sitting on top of the pole, tail curled down — The interest
On top of the pole · 22 Oct, 10:07 AM
From the visits Aarav or Claude checked

94visits Aarav or Claude checked, of 94 the camera counted
17 Octfirst seen
7 min 9 slongest visit, 18 Oct at 8:05 AM, sitting on the pole top
7:42 AMearliest he’s come, 18 Oct
5:26 PMhis latest bedtime, 19 Oct
8:37 AMa usual first visit, 1 h 35 min after sunrise
4:08 PMa usual last visit, 1 h 46 min before sunset
29visits on his busiest day, 20 Oct
the polehis favourite spot, 59% of his time
6 daysevery day since he was first seen
21 san average visit
18 min 20 ssitting still, all told

Is it the interest? · 1 of 12

A crop the camera saved: is it the squirrel of interest?

Him, or not?

Real crops, as small as the checker sees them.

You 0 · Checker 0

94 visits in 6 days, and 1 h 14 min of him on camera.

Everything the camera has worked out about him since 16 Oct, counted only while it was really watching. It refreshes every couple of minutes while the Pi is up.

94visits of his
1 h 14 minon camera
6days he came
3,492things that moved, each one judged
19,931crops the teacher double-checked
v4the checker running, after a rollback on 22 Oct

01 When he comes

A morning squirrel

Sat 17 Oct42176 min 47 s

Sun 18 Oct155221535 min 20 s

Mon 19 Oct2111124112311 min 43 s

Tue 20 Oct3145341712910 min 33 s

Wed 21 Oct131521137 min 3 s

Thu 22 Oct15173 min 19 s

Half his visits fall between 8 AM and 11 AM, and he usually turns up 1 h 35 min after sunrise.

One row a day, one column an hour, each cell as dark as his visits in it. The bars on top add up every day.

02 Where he goes

Mostly the pole

Pole59%27 min 33 s over 67 visits
High wire20%9 min 15 s over 67 visits
Top wire12%5 min 29 s over 49 visits
Middle wire9%4 min 14 s over 16 visits
Thick cable1%34 s over 8 visits

How he spends it

14% moving32% stopping54% sitting on the pole

03 How it learns

A new checker most nights, and one step back

Found him, on crops neither checker had seen

False alarms, on everything else

v1turned down
v2turned down
v3turned down
v4went live
v5rolled back
v6rolled back
v7turned down
v8turned down
v9rolled back

9 retrains so far, and 4 passed the test. Then on 22 Oct v5, v6 and v9 were rolled back: they had learned the bare pole and orange leaves as him, and the test had been built from the same labels. The camera runs v4 again.

the live checker that night
the new one, better
the new one, worse
within half a point

Each night’s new checker is tested against the live one on the same crops. It goes live only if it finds at least as much of him and has no more false alarms, within half a point, and is better at one of the two. Point at a retrain to see why it went the way it did.

v9 · 22 Oct · rolled back · the latest

Passed its test: it found more of him (83% against 78%), with fewer false alarms (0.5% against 1.7%). Then rolled back: it had been taught on labels that called a whole track him, leaves and bare pole included, and tested on the same.

Found him: 78% → 83% better
False alarms: 1.7% → 0.5% better

The teacher agrees with the checker on 91% of the last 500 visits it has looked at.

Up the pole, and a seat on top

Camera

Tracker

Checker

Teacher

Reviews

Retrain

The interest

Coming soon