Uncle Matt, a wild-haired maker wearing round welding goggles Uncle Matt makes
The Backyard

It started with an opossum

We moved into a new place, my son spotted an opossum in the yard, and somewhere between there and "the best project you've ever made" I put a camera on the back door that can tell the raccoons apart.

originscritter camwildlife
A raccoon sitting upright on a stone garden wall in daylight, looking toward the camera.

We hadn’t been in the new place long. A couple of nights in, my son waved me over to the back window because something was moving around out there in the dark. An opossum. Which, if you know my girlfriend, is a celebrity sighting: the opossum is her favorite animal, no contest.

So we started watching the backyard. Not in a project way. In a “hey, come look” way, coffee going cold, faces at the glass.

The backyard the camera watches: a low stone wall, a few pots, and the patch of ground where everybody eventually turns up.
The whole observatory. A sliding glass door, a stone wall, and a plate of snacks for whoever wanders through.

The camera came later

The project part showed up sideways. I was having one of those conversations about whether all this AI everyone is shouting about could do something actually useful around the house, not just answer email. And it clicked: point a camera at the yard and have it tell me who came by while we were asleep.

So that is what the backyard is now. A cheap webcam looking through the sliding door, and enough software behind it to notice when something moves, grab its picture, and take a real guess at what it is looking at.

Then came the part I did not expect. For weeks we figured it was the same raccoon on repeat. One raccoon, very busy. Then you start noticing things. A notch out of an ear. A limp. A tail that has clearly been through something. It was a whole cast out there, and I suddenly, badly, wanted to know every one of them by name.

Meet Stan

The first one we named is Stan. Stan stands up. Constantly, up on the back legs for a better look at the plate, at us, at nothing in particular. Named him for it. Then one evening Stan stood up at just the right angle and we understood that Stan is, medically speaking, a mom. Nobody tell Stan. The name stuck.

The camera catching Stan on the back deck, a green box drawn around him with a little "animal 0.64" label next to it.
The moment the software spots Stan. It is not certain. It is trying its best. So am I.

About two weeks in, my girlfriend called it the best project I have ever made. I have made a lot of things. That one landed.

Now the morning has a new step in it. Coffee, then open the page and see who visited overnight. I text her the good clips before she is even up. It started with an opossum at the window and turned into the thing I use every single day. Sometimes a project just walks across the yard at 2am and stares at your house until you let it in.

Read “Behind the Glass”, the full making-of ↗

The code is on GitHub ↗

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