This is the step people most often get slightly wrong, and it is the one that most affects your results. Spend the extra two minutes on the preview screen.
What you are aiming for
Point the camera down the alley, so that the feed bunk on the opposite side from the camera fills as much of the frame as possible.
The specific thing to check: the close edge of the opposite bunk should stay in frame all the way to the far end of the alley. If the bunk runs out of the bottom of the picture halfway down, tilt up slightly. If half your frame is roof, tilt down.
There is no exact angle to dial in. Every barn is different. Look at the camera’s preview and adjust until the bunk runs from near the camera to the far end without leaving the frame.
Why the far side
You outline the feed bunk once, and we measure that strip in every photo. The bunk on the far side of the alley is the one the camera can actually see into — feed in the near bunk, directly below the camera, is hidden by the bunk wall and by the camera’s own angle.
Also make sure
- The timestamp is visible. It normally prints along the bottom edge. Check it appears in the preview and is not cropped or covered.
- Nothing permanent blocks the view. A post, a feed cart parked in its usual spot, or a low-hanging light in the middle of the frame will sit in the same place in every photo.
- You can see the alley floor, not just the bunk. Feed trucks and push-up machines travel the alley, and seeing them is how we detect deliveries and push-ups.
Confirm before you leave
Take a test shot and look at it on the camera’s screen — not just the live preview. Then close the case and let it run.
If you can, come back the next day and pull a couple of photos off the card before committing to a full two-week run. Ten minutes of checking beats discovering a fogged lens after fourteen days.
If the view was not ideal
It is not fatal. When you outline your bunk after uploading, you can pick a clearer photo to draw on, and you can nudge the corners on individual photos. See Outline your feed bunk.
But a camera that could not see the bunk at all will produce a thin report, and no amount of correcting afterwards recovers information the camera never captured.