My nesting box is based on the RSPB single box design, but made into a terrace box with internal partitions. It was installed on 8th May 2022, so it's not had long enough yet to be discovered by nesting birds. The breeding birds who already have nest sites from the previous year return in April/early May and will generally not be interested in other sites.
A second wave of birds arrive around late May/early June. These are 2-3 year old birds who are ready to breed and may do so if they are able to find a nest site in time. They are the ones most likely to be attracted to nest boxes and breed.
A third wave are yearlings who have not yet bred and are returning from their migrations in mid/late July. They won't breed but will seek nest sites to return to for the following year.
Therefore waves two and three are the ones to try to attract to nest boxes. The general method for attracting them is to place loudspeakers outdoors, as close to the nest box as possible, and play recordings of unmated pairs of males and females to advertise the presence of suitable accommodation. Being a Linux enthusiast, my system uses a small computer board running, in this case, Ubuntu Server 22.04, with sox installed so that I can insert play commands into the /etc/crontab file. I've plugged the audio out from the computer into a small amplifier bought through eBay, connected to hopefully weatherproof loudspeakers made with Mylar cone drivers. Now I have to wait, and hope, and see what happens....
If this section is of interest please email me any comments/questions.
My solution is to use a Linux application called gpsprune to, as the name says, prune the track file down to a sensible number of points. I then use a simple text editor to format the result nicely and change track point tags to route point tags and insert route point names. I then finally use a little C program to do the final boring task of indexing the route point names. The resulting gpx file can be copied onto a GPS receiver for use in the field. To get the source code for my indexer just send email and my server will auto reply with the file.
Email addresses, dates and times are logged.
I actually needed a light box for another project, the GL decal, so...
I stripped everything out, made an accurate CAD drawing for an internal carrier for the new parts, cut out the carrier from some off cut acrylic sheet with my little milling machine and drilled holes to fit the self tapping screw holes in the case bottom. The LEDs are of course daylight white self adhesive strip from some eBay seller. The power supply is a Traco TPP 15-109A-J, which is nominally 9V with a little up/down adjustment to set the brightness of the LEDs to one's liking.
The case already had a nicely fitted mains inlet and ON/OFF switch. Years ago I'd bought from a "bargain basement" section of CPC a bag of mains leads with ready fitted internal equipment connectors which, Lo! and Behold! exactly match the mains inlet header on the Traco supply so I just stripped down one of those and used it to neatly connect up the power. Happy with that!