I managed to enable/disable the camera based on a schedule, so I think I can wrap this part up. Power consumption while the sensors are idle and the camera is disabled is ~110mA. With the camera enabled it draws ~185mA. Streaming adds another ~35mA (~220mA with camera enabled and streaming).

To recap what's there so far:

Monitors

• PIR - state and # of times it was triggered today
• Sensor IR - state (on or off)
• Timer - state (on or off)
• Feed - state (ok or low)
• Deposit - state (ok or jammed) and # of times it was triggered today
• Dispense - state (ok or jammed) and # of times it was triggered today

Controls

• manual start and stop of recording
• manual dispensing of feed
• manual snapshot of still images

I removed the manual turning on of the sensors, as this is not super useful by itself, at least with my use case. I also removed the buttons to manually enable and disable the camera, as there is already a place in the UI to do this.

Logs

• All monitored events are logged with datetime stamps
• Vending machine logs are rotated daily

Recording

• records while the sensors are on (meaning a bird is triggering the PIR)

Power Saving

• camera is enabled at 6:00am and disabled at 6:00pm (on/off times are configurable) to save power overnight

Updated scripts are on GitHub. I also added a VMFB_timer.sh script you could use instead of the 555-based timer on the PCB. 

So now I will add some documentation to GitHub on how to use these scripts with motioneye/motioneyeos and the PVC enclosure build.

I am feeling like I've hit the "feature-complete" milestone on this project - it's doing everything I want it to. 

• Works as a vending machine for birds
• Runs sustainably off solar power
• Optional remote monitoring and control 

Now I just need to get it back outside somewhere.