Here are some highlights from the bears:

The birth of the 2 cubs

This camera stream is being broadcast from Ely, MN inside a black bear den. The bears in this den, Lily and her 1 year old cub, Hope, are part of a research study by Dr. Lynn Rogers of the North American Bear Center, www.bear.org.

The first wild bear cam was the brainchild of Doug Hajicek back in 1999. After the overwhelming success of last year's cam, the 2011 Lily Den Cam is now the 3rd Wild Bear Cam Doug Hajicek of Whitewolf Entertainment Inc. has produced. This year's being the toughest one by far due to the fact that Lily chose to den in an area with no close by power grid or internet connection.

PixController, Inc. designed, manufactured, and installed the custom camera system for this project to cope with the challenges posed by the very remote area without power or Internet access. The camera system they designed is battery powered and solar charged, and has the video being streamed to the Internet via wireless 3G cellular link. The Cellular 3G hardware and data plan are being provided by Verizon Wireless.

There are 2 cameras connected to the system. One camera is a small camera that is placed inside the bear den. This is a day color/night infrared (IR) camera which can see in complete darkness. The second camera is installed outside the den and is a pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) camera, which will be used to watch and follow the bears if they come out of the den site.

Only one camera will be streaming at a time, and these cameras can be selected and remotely controlled by members of the Bear Center or PixController, Inc. Engineers. The camera system is also equipped with custom electronics which will monitor the systems battery supply. Daily emails are sent to the engineers with systems status information in order that we can keep the stream running smoothly throughout the project.