discussion / Camera Traps  / 21 March 2019

Camera Trapping Software

Hi everyone,

We're dealing with huge amounts of Camera Trapping data in different contexts. Probably as most people, we've been using spreadsheets to annotate the image data in order to perform subsequent analysis.

With a multitude of dedicated camera trap image management software emerging (Young et al. 2018), we are now looking to implement such a software in our workflow. We've tried out Camelot for a while which is great, but it lacks a very necessary feature: User Management (Rights, Permissions and Privileges). 

Since switching costs are high, I thought to ask the community what software is used in their environment with an open poll. You can see the results once you submit an answer:

https://forms.gle/uafXkWzh8FinCsv86

Would be great to get some responses!

Cheers,

Nils

PS: @StephODonnell : Would be glad for a tweet on this!

 

 

 

Young, S, Rode‐Margono, J, Amin, R. Software to facilitate and streamline camera trap data management: A review. Ecol Evol. 2018; 8: 9947– 9957. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4464




Hi Nils (& thanks Steph!),

Author of Camelot here.  User Management is something we've looked at, though expectations around it vary greatly. Camelot tries to facilitate both the sole person using a desktop, right through to a large multi-user server installation. This means we have everything from those who'd prefer there to be no user management right through to very large organisations, who may ideally want single sign-on and fine-grained permissioning.

When we introduce things, we like to make sure they're addressing the problem. I'd be very interested to better understand your environment & hear what use cases you'd like to satisfy with it.

Finally as a work around for this limitation, I'm aware of universities deploying Camelot behind a reverse proxy in order to provide login (and, possibly, some basic access privileges).

Chris

Hey Guys,

Thanks for hosting the survey and making in public on twitter! I've posted the results in a github repo, available here: https://github.com/ratnanil/CameraTrappingSoftwareSurvey (the main result is also attached). 

@cshclm : You are doing a great job with your software! I think it really works great on a individual user basis, but we've found that when running the software in a multi user setting we lack some out of the box solution with regards to a role-based access to data and system capabilities

  • Password protecting the interface
  • Assigning roles to users (Admins, Managers, Classify-only, View-only)

We have many people working on different projects and things can get really complicated when everybody can do everything (create, delete, tag) on any project. I can get into more detail in your google group

PS: A very interesting paper on this very topic: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/aje.12550

 

HI Nils, 

Oh cool, thanks for sharing the results. You had such a strong response on twitter as well, it was intersting to see all the comments that came back in the replies. The twitter thread is here if anyone is curious. Are you incorporating the responses that came through in the comments into your quick poll? And more importantly, has it given you the insight you wanted to make a decision about what you want to use? 

Content aside, the way you jumped in and managed the conversation after we posted was such a great example of how to effectively springboard off our reach to conservation tech people, so kudos to you. I'm just writing our March Digest (Feb one is here) - is the poll closed or are you still interested in more feedback? Should I includ your ask? 

Steph