About ClucksNet

LIVE CHICKEN CAM · A VILLAGE OUTSIDE YORK · NORTH YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND · 24/7

ClucksNet is a free, ad-free, 24/7 live stream of four hens living their best lives in the garden of a detached house in a rural village outside York in North Yorkshire, England. Bought in April 2026 as a birthday surprise, they've settled in with considerable confidence and very little gratitude. The stream runs around the clock — from the chicken run during the day, and overnight inside the Omlet Eglu Cube.

There are no adverts, no subscriptions, no popups, and no tracking. Just chickens.

🐔 The Flock

The four hens each have distinctive markings that make them identifiable on camera:

Crumpet

Jet black feathers with bold copper and burnt orange streaking on her neck, chest and wings. Upright, elegant posture. Named after a World of Warcraft Warlock character.

Triborg

Striking silver-grey and black laced feathers with iridescent blue-black wings and slate-grey legs. Named after the Mortal Kombat character.

Mishelle

Predominantly white with a distinctive black speckled cap on top of her head. The easiest to spot on camera. Named after a family friend.

Margo Leadbetter

Warm chestnut red all over with cream wing tips and a bright red upright comb. Solid, rounded build. Named after the character from The Good Life.

You may also spot Tessa — a fluffy white Bichon Frisé who considers herself ~~chief supervisor~~ absolute dictator of the run and is absolutely not a hen.

🏠 The Eglu

The hens live in an Omlet Eglu Cube, a well-insulated modular chicken house designed for small flocks. The run is connected to an Omlet automatic door controlled by Home Assistant, which opens and closes it based on calculated sunrise and sunset times for the current date and location. During winter months, when daylight in North Yorkshire is in short supply, the schedule is adjusted dynamically to make the most of available light. The Eglu does have a built-in ambient light sensor, but this is currently overridden in favour of the Home Assistant-calculated schedule. The door state, light level, interior temperature and humidity are all monitored live and displayed in the status panel on the live cam page.

⚙️ The Technology

ClucksNet runs on a self-hosted homelab in North Yorkshire. Video is captured by UniFi G5 Turret Ultra cameras and pulled via RTSPS into a pair of Docker containers running FFmpeg on Proxmox. FFmpeg transcodes each stream to H.264 at 1080p and 6 Mbps, mixes in a silent AAC audio track (required by YouTube's ingest), and pushes it to YouTube's RTMP endpoint in real time. From there, YouTube handles delivery to viewers worldwide via its CDN — meaning the stream is stable and geographically distributed without any egress cost on the homelab side.

CAMERASUniFi G5 Turret Ultra × 2

ROUTERUDM Pro Max

SWITCHINGUSW-Aggregation + USW-16-PoE

COMPUTE × 2Minisforum MS-01

HYPERVISORProxmox VE

CONTAINERSDocker

TRANSCODINGFFmpeg (libx264)

DELIVERYYouTube CDN via RTMP

UPSUniFi UPS 2U

AUTOMATIONHome Assistant

WEB SERVERApache 2.4

DNS / PROXYCloudflare

The NORAD-style status panel on the live cam page displays real-time data including exterior and interior temperatures, exterior and interior humidity, door state, ambient light level, local weather conditions, flock activity status, wind speed, background radiation, and live viewer count — all updated every 30–60 seconds without page refresh.

YouTube stream links are regenerated automatically each night at 3am via a Python script using the YouTube Data API v3, which creates fresh broadcast events and binds them to persistent RTMP stream keys. The web pages are updated accordingly. If you loaded the page before 3am and are seeing a dead stream, a browser refresh should pick up the latest links.

☢️ Radiation Monitor

The RADIATION reading in the status panel is live background radiation measured by a GQ GMC-800 Geiger counter connected to Home Assistant via USB. Background radiation in North Yorkshire typically reads between 10 and 50 CPM (counts per minute). Values outside this range will change colour — amber for elevated, red for high. If it ever goes red, something interesting has happened in North Yorkshire.

CURRENT READING IS LIVE · NORMAL BACKGROUND: 10–50 CPM · LAST UPDATE: REAL-TIME

☀️ Solar & Battery Power — Coming May 2026

In May 2026 the homelab is going green. A 3.6 kWp south-facing and 3.2 kWp north-facing solar array (6.8 kWp total) plus a Tesla Powerwall 3 with expansion pack will be installed on-site, paired with an Octopus Cozy 12 kW air source heat pump. The goal is to run as much of the infrastructure as possible on locally generated renewable energy. Overnight, when solar generation is unavailable, the system imports from the grid — timed to favour lower-carbon periods. The site runs on an Octopus Intelligent Go with Export tariff to optimise both import costs and exported surplus.

SOLAR (S-FACING)3.6 kWp

SOLAR (N-FACING)3.2 kWp

STORAGE27 kWh

SYSTEMPowerwall 3

HEAT PUMP12 kW

TOTAL SOLAR6.8 kWp

Once the system is live, real-time solar output and battery charge level will be added to the status panel on the live cam page.

📡 Watch on YouTube

The streams are delivered via YouTube at 1080p. YouTube links are regenerated nightly — the links below are always current.

▶ Eglu Cam on YouTube · ▶ Run Cam on YouTube

📋 Changelog

A full record of every change made to ClucksNet — features added, bugs fixed, and decisions made. Written for developers. Contains chickens.

▶ View CHANGELOG.md