Group

Camera Traps / Feed

Looking for a place to discuss camera trap troubleshooting, compare models, collaborate with members working with other technologies like machine learning and bioacoustics, or share and exchange data from your camera trap research? Get involved in our Camera Traps group! All are welcome whether you are new to camera trapping, have expertise from the field to share, or are curious about how your skill sets can help those working with camera traps. 

discussion

Camera trap recommendations

Hi everyone! I’m looking for camera trap recommendations for a pilot study in Rwanda focused mostly on capturing small to large mammals (both domestic and wild).I’m hoping to find...

9 0

Surprised no one has recommended Bushnell. In Indonesia we use Bushnell 30MP Core DS-4K No Glow  119949C and Bushnell 32MP Core DS-4K Double Sensor 119987C, both are now the same price here. Depending on where you are they may be more expensive, but they retail in North America for close to USD 100. No wifi but in remote locations that doesn't matter. Low flash and good image/video quality. Definitely recommend getting a case for protection against animals (we have macaques and Sun bears). They like to grab hold and scratch a little but we've never had serious damage. 

Hi Stephanie, We are manufacturing an innovative AI-powered trail camera called DeterCam, and we are based in the UK: https://innovfactory.com/ 

The camera is equipped with our Edge AI technology, which allows it to detect only animals and send media (pictures/videos) only when an animal is present in front of the camera. This significantly reduces false triggers and power consumption.

Our Edge AI architecture allows the camera to operate for up to 1 year on battery power (assuming approximately 5 triggers per day). The system also allows full remote control from our cloud platform, including:

• Video duration
• PIR trigger settings
• Detection configuration
• Camera management and updates

The camera is equipped with a 4G module, allowing all media and detections to be uploaded directly to the cloud, meaning there is no need to physically collect data from the SD card.

We supply the complete solution, including manufacturing the battery packs ourselves. The total internal battery capacity can reach up to 32,500 mAh. To date, we have sold over 10,000 units worldwide.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

You can email me if you have any further questions: [email protected] 

Hi, are you looking to import these? Do you have any import tax considerations? This could impact which models you buy. I have been using Acorn models, very reliable and provide photo and 4K video with sound options.

Best wishes

Susan

See full post
discussion

A thermal (at 1280x1024 resolution) impression of Kasteel park Born, The Netherlands

I'd like to share some of the first video content filmed with our new 1280x1024 thermal module. We are proud to announce that Wildlife Security Innovations has a new partnership...

3 3

On this note, if the application was poacher detection, then with the general purpose lens on this module it can detect a person with AI in complete darkness at 100m. As in this photo.

Poacher

Hi Kim,

Pretty impressive camera! How much are these going for? We are hoping to find some cameras that can withstand the Canadian winter. Do you have any comparable recommendations that might be available in these parts (Toronto, Ontario)? 

We've developed real-time monitoring pipeline for basic behaviours in tigers and polar bears at the Toronto Zoo using CCTV Livestreams and are now hoping to configure a standalone camera system with a microcontroller and 4G-enabled router for real-time monitoring and alerts in a mobile deployment. 

For your particular camera, you had mentioned in another thread that an export license is required outside of the EU for various camera resolutions - why is that?

Thanks in advance for your input!

Li

That 1280x1024 resolution thermal camera is extremely expensive. It's more than 10,000 euros.

As to standing low temperatures the thermal modules are rated to -40C. I guess I'll find out soon enough if they can stand the cold temperatures as two of these units will be going to Greenland soon.

Our thermal systems will not run on micro-controllers. They come with either a Raspberry Pi based host of a NVidia Jetson based host.

About export licenses. Thermal imaging technology is deemed dual-use tech. And it's governed in Europe by what's called the Wassenaar agreement or ITAR. Canada is on the list of countries for which less restrictions apply. Export doesn't need a license for up to 384x288 resolution. But 640 resolution or higher require a license. We apply for such licenses to export for our clients. There's potentially up to an 8 week wait for a license, but there's also a wait for typically 6-8 weeks to get new stock unless I happen to have some spare.

The 640x512 based system is sold with an outdoor box and 3D printed enclosures suitable for outdoor wildlife monitoring and the host computer and software and is in the vincity of 3000 euros, but the price varies with the chosen components and also what's happening in the markets. Currently Raspberry Pi hardware is crazy expensive to what it used to be priced at due to the memory shortage.

See full post
discussion

Call for Collaboration: Share your voice at ICTC next week! 

Hello, fellow WILDLAB-ers! I'm Mandy, your current Human-Wildlife Coexistence Group Leader!  :)I am heading to the ICTC conference in Peru next week and while reviewing the...

5 6

Hi Anna!

Is there anything that sparks your curiosity, which I can address for you? Take a look at the upcoming day 2 and day 3 sessions, and if you see anything that intrigues you, please let me know! I'll happily join the session that aligns, and share your thoughts! ☺️

Kind regards,

Mandy

See full post
discussion

Nature Tech Unconference - Anyone attending?

Hi all, anyone planning to attend the Nature Tech Unconference on 28th March at the London School of Economics Campus in London, UK? (the event is free to attend but...

11 2

Myself and the Fauna & Flora Conservation Technology team will be there (@Chelsea_Smith  and @ugyenpenjor ) and also the WILDLABS team @HRees ! See you!

See full post
discussion

Synchronizing camera traps

Did anyone ever succeed in synchronizing camera traps?In some of my deploymment, I wish for a wider view. I have thought about synchronizing two standard camera traps set up at an...

4 0

I've looked into adding external triggers to camera traps.  I've documented that effort here.  Basically, it involves board level work to hijack the trigger signal.  But as this signal is open drain, it's straightforward to wire-OR several of these signals from multiple cameras.  In your case, you can perform this OR operation using simple wireless units.

I'm afraid I don't see a way to abstract and extract the trigger functionality cleanly into a drop-in product.  Perhaps the best that can be done is to convert all participating cameras into slave units by replacing the IR sensor with a connector to which a master triggering source is attached.  This still requires individual board work, but is at least straightforward.

See full post
discussion

Biowatch: a free, open-source desktop app for camera trap analysis

Hi everyone  I wanted to share something we've been building that feels right at home in this community: Biowatch, a free and open-source desktop app...

6 3

This looks amazing and I look forward to trying it out when I get the chance! 

Just wondering, when it comes to the AI recognitions, is there a way to "rename" the recognitions that were incorrect? 

See full post
careers

Ecological Data Scientist

The Smithsonian Institution is the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex, with 21 museums and the National Zoo. This position is located in the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology...

1
See full post
discussion

Bats in a field

For those of you interested in bats, thought I'd share. Our camera trap triggered on bats in the field in thermal last night several times. Most of the time we haven't seen those...

1
See full post
discussion

Safe and Sound project report: Is Camtrap DP a suitable standard for (bio)acoustic data?

Dear WILDLABS community,We are pleased to share with you the publication of the Safe and Sound project report: Is Camtrap DP a suitable...

1 7

Your report on extending Camtrap DP to bioacoustics resonated with something we are just beginning to explore in Mindoro Island, Philippines.

We have ongoing camera trap deployments in interior forest habitats and are beginning to examine the acoustic layer embedded in those recordings, particularly for nocturnal species such as the Mindoro Boobook. The discussion around terminology and how datasets are structured feels especially relevant, though I am still trying to understand how frameworks like Camtrap DP would apply in practice to this kind of data.

It is encouraging to see this direction being shaped at the community level. I will be following this closely as we continue to learn and figure out how our own datasets might eventually align.

See full post
discussion

Camera trappin hedgehogs in woodlands.

Hi all - a query about potential limitations of camera trapping at night in very dark woodland environments.  My organisation (PTES/BHPS)  runs the national hedgehog...

14 0

Another hedgehog detection. This one from at least 20m away.



 

Thanks - thee are thermal images rather than traditional?  The nature of our survey (a large citizen science survey where 30 cameras are placed at a time around a 1km square) would probably mean financially using thermal cameras would be very expensive.  But knowing that traditional cameras are missing hogs in some of the places we are nt finding them, would mean that we could perhaps focus in on certain environments with more expensive equipment.

That's true. These are thermal.

I believe for the hedgehog usecase likely you could already get a great improvement in detectability wtih the 256x192 resolution module. I won't mention prices in this post but I'll DM you with some more information.

Note, I haven't tested the 256x192 resolution modules in detecting hedgehogs, but I have some more coming in soon then I can potentially use one for testing, this could well we worth testing out. If I can find a reason reliably place to detect hedgehogs around here :-)

I hope you enjoyed the video of the hogs. With the latest one I had the camera angled more down the path. I'm quite happy to see just how far away it can see the little guys.

See full post
discussion

Halow wifi, local AI, thermal + visible

I've just recently received a halow wifi bridge set. The pair I ordered claims up to 3km operation line of sight. Now I suspect that 2km line of sight might be more what one could...

8 1

Cool!

makes me think of your other posting about shared/"extra" inferencing on a Jetson compute board , if edge sensors could just stream low fps stuff point-point back to it...

 

I think that you are thinking in the right direction with this Chris. Once you have made to bridge over to higher power processors than microcontrollers. All your options open up. And pre-selection of training images to save data transfer costs whilst keeping it remotely transferrable makes good sense.

See full post
discussion

I WANT TO TELL YOUR STORY

I create ocean exploration and marine life content on YouTube, whether it be recording nautilus on BRUVs, swimming with endangered bowmouth guitarfish, documenting reef...

3 12

Amazing!

Found your instagram page and have been scrolling all morning ( most educative doomscrolling I've done so far😂). Love it, am seeing sea creatures I've never seen.

Wonderful work! Would you be interested in documenting a story about afforestation from the Pacific Ocean to the Himalayas (Indus River focus)? 

I’m interested in doing an expedition documentary bridging mythology and conservation with a YouTuber to help bring awareness towards forest conservation all along the river. The focus is water and water wildlife.

See full post
discussion

Solar powered thermal wolf monitor

My solar powered thermal+visible local AI wolf monitoring system has been running 4 1/2 months in the field now. I've only had to take the battery back to charge it one time when...

6 2

Hi, Kim,

This is really cool!

It seems to me that there are at least two different wolves in this video (Feb 7). Does your AI system identifies individuals?

I am not focusing on identifying individuals. It would be very hard to do so even for a human that knew the wolves based on 640 resolution or lower resolution thermal modules. Possibly the 1280x1024 resolution thermal module could start to get good enough for that.

Daytime with visible light would be quite a different thing, but the wolves at this site do not come during the day. We are trying not to disturb the wolves, so I'm using 940nm invisible lighting for night, but as a consequence the camera also sees it less well.

My focus is on reliable recognition that wolves are there along with rapid alerting and response, with an eye towards helping people have viable tools to keep their animals safe and live with wolves.

I will receive a 1280x1024 resolution thermal module soon, so I hope to find out how good the image is, I expect it will be amazing. It has double the resolution width and height and slightly more zoom than what I have now. We should see wolves really well with it.

It might also be, that thermal shows up some attributes, such as old wounds, through the fur that would help with identification. Hope to find out soon. I'm pretty sure that we have been able to identify the older mother Noella frequently. Most just through size differences.

We hit winter pretty quickly, so the 4K ultra low light visible module was not used due to taking up too much power 5W, versus 1W for the thermal. I hope to be able to redeploy this soon now we are approaching spring and there is abundant sunshine again.

Your profile says you are involved with pathogen monitoring. I would expect there to be good potential for health monitoring with thermal modules. The 1280x1024 resolution module I'm ordering is also radiometric. So within around 5m it can tell the temperature of individual pixels. I see potential here for example for detecting pigs with swine fever, that sort of thing.

Thank you for your detailed response. Looking forward to seeing what will come out of your 1280x1024 module.

Some nocturnal mammals, opossums for example, display unique mark patterns at UV range (in case you have detectors for that range).

And yes, thermal images for health monitoring holds great potential. Keep up the good work!

See full post
discussion

Camera trap or fixed-camera setups for insect guild monitoring at dung/carrion stations (Brazil)

Hi everyone,I’m a PhD student in tropical ecology based in Brazil, and I’m currently planning a field pilot that will use cameras to monitor invertebrate (insect) activity at...

7 1

@Hubertszcz maybe you have advice: "Minimum resolution or lens characteristics that are sufficient for guild-level classification" 

 

i don't really know what guild-level means.

 

@domvonmatter - do you have a photo or drawing example of what a carrion station would look like on the forest floor? like will the camera be on the ground? Will it be above the ground but looking down?

how big of an area does it need to image?

 

what data do you need to get out? Like behavior that might need full motion video but maybe lower visual resolution? or just identification that might need lower temporal resolution, but higher visual resolution

There aren’t that many close-focus trail cameras.  The only current model I’m aware of is the GardePro E8PCF.  It is fixed focus at 200mm (no zoom).  I have not used this camera, but know others who have.  It has a timelapse feature. One thing to check before buying is that the timelapse feature works at night.  The GP website has a picture that suggests this true, but I know (for example) that in Browning camera timelapse does not work at night.

[There are other options.  You can attach lenses from reading glasses to a standard focus trail camera to convert it to close focus.  I have developed firmware hacks for older Browning SpecOps and ReconForce cameras that allows the timelapse to work around the clock.  Alas, these hacks don’t work on the latest HP5-Ultra models, and retrofitting optics on a pile of cameras is probably not how you want to spend your time. I'd try the GP]

See full post