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Preserved reference archive Wildlife cameras, nest boxes and CCTV · West Cornwall · 1997–2021
Handykam archive

Archive

The range, archived

Choosing and understanding

Building and fitting

Short, specific answers

Glossaries and elsewhere

CCTV

Where the cameras went

Handykam.com is a preserved reference archive of a Cornish wildlife-camera business that has ceased trading. Nothing on this site is for sale and no orders, enquiries or support can be handled.

Shelf of hand-made wooden nest boxes, dormouse boxes and an owl box in a workshop
Plate 1Shelf of hand-made wooden nest boxes, dormouse boxes and an owl box in a workshop

Equipment archive index

Handykam ceased trading. This site is preserved as a reference archive of its wildlife-camera guidance and equipment. Nothing here is for sale, and no orders, enquiries or support can be handled.

This address used to be the shop. It is now the category index to the archive: the same range Handykam supplied, grouped the way the company grouped it, with each group pointing at the guidance that explained it. Nothing here is purchasable and no part of the ordering, basket or account system has been preserved. If you want the range by part number instead, that is the model index.

Wildlife cameras

The largest category and the company's identity. It covered complete camera nest box systems, camera kits for boxes people already owned, and bare cameras — analogue board cameras for most of the company's life, network cameras at the end of it.

Guidance: Wired or wireless camera? · Camera resolution · FAQ: wired small analogue camera

Wildlife boxes

Hand-made in Cornwall from responsibly sourced timber and supplied camera-ready: pine and rustic bird boxes, the large outdoor owl box, hedgehog boxes with tarpaulin, cedar dormouse boxes, and combined nest box and feeder units. Hole sizers, hole protectors, predator guards, perspex windows and tree protectors sat alongside them.

Guidance: How to build a barn owl box · Fitting an owl box camera

Trail cameras and camera traps

Motion-triggered cameras, bought in and independently tested rather than manufactured, plus their brackets, locks, mains power cables and memory. The company was explicit that it was brand-neutral here and reviewed a great many cameras every year.

Guidance: Choosing the best trail camera · How trail cameras work · FAQ: trail cameras

CCTV

A separate line, aimed at Cornish homes, farms, businesses, clubs, churches and boatyards: analogue and IP cameras, recorders, and installation. It shared almost all of its technology with the wildlife range — a nest box camera and a CCTV camera are the same object with different expectations.

Guidance: Cornwall CCTV · Farm CCTV · Digital IP versus analogue CCTV · CCTV camera lenses and board lens tips

Recording and streaming

USB capture devices for putting an analogue camera onto a computer, digital and network video recorders for continuous or motion-triggered recording, motion capture software, and live streaming packages for organisations that wanted a public webcam rather than a private one.

Guidance: FAQ: DVRs and NVRs · Software links and downloads

Cables, components and parts

AV cables from 5m to 50m, DC cables, network cable, extension kits and couplers, 12v power supplies, splitters, three-camera switchers, SD cards and readers, batteries, and the small wooden and metal fittings — connector trays, false ceilings, hole sizers — that made a box work with a camera.

Guidance: FAQ: cables · How an analogue camera works

Specialist and inspection cameras

A smaller commercial line: drain, pipe, chimney, boiler and survey inspection cameras, thermal handheld units, and high-specification outdoor network cameras for professional monitoring. Almost none of this part of the catalogue survives in any detail, and it is recorded here rather than reconstructed.

What was removed

Prices, sale badges, stock levels, delivery and returns terms, guarantees, the basket, the payment pages, accounts and every contact route. The archive keeps the description of the equipment and the advice about using it, because those still mean something, and drops everything that only made sense while there was a business behind it. For an idea of who was using this equipment and why, see education, science and research and conservation.