First, in non-beetle-related news, this happened last night:

There are two Raspberry Pis in the Cygnus spacecraft, the payload carried by the Atlas V rocket above, which are destined for the International Space Station, where they’ll be used to run kids’ space experiments as part of the Astro Pi project. We’ll have more information for you about the launch on Wednesday, when Dave and Jon will be back from watching the launch in Florida!

Back to the beetles.

Will McGugan has some unusual pets. He keeps elephant beetles, which come from Central and South America.

Elephant beetles are nocturnal, so when Will’s around, they’re not doing anything very exciting. At night, they’re very active – but who wants to watch 12 hours of beetles? So Will has developed Beetlecam, a timelapse project that should be easy enough for beginners to get to grips with. (In the video above, 24 hours of beetle activity has been condensed into two minutes.)

Will says:

To run Beetlecam, you will need the following 3 things:

• A Raspberry Pi (any model)
• A Raspberry Pi Camera
• A tank of large tropical insects

If you don’t happen to have the last one, don’t worry, it will work with just about anything you would like to make a timelapse of.

Imagine the possibilities!

You can find links to Will’s Beetlecam.py software and installation instructions over at his website. He’s busy writing further posts in this beetle-tastic series – and we’re looking forward to seeing what the rest of you get up to with the software. This is a good project for beginners – and if you’ve got a hamster, a chinchilla or another kind of creature that’s only active at night time, this is a great way to get your teeth into Raspberry Pi.