Autonomous camera traps for insects provide a tool for long-term remote monitoring of insects. These systems bring together cameras, computer vision, and autonomous infrastructure such as solar panels, mini computers, and data telemetry to collect images of insects.
With increasing recognition of the importance of insects as the dominant component of almost all ecosystems, there are growing concerns that insect biodiversity has declined globally, with serious consequences for the ecosystem services on which we all depend.
Automated camera traps for insects offer one of the best practical and cost-effective solutions for more standardised monitoring of insects across the globe. However, to realise this we need interdisciplinary teams who can work together to develop the hardware systems, AI components, metadata standards, data analysis, and much more.
This WILDLABS group has been set up by people from around the world who have individually been tackling parts of this challenge and who believe we can do more by working together.
We hope you will become part of this group where we share our knowledge and expertise to advance this technology.
Check out Tom's Variety Hour talk for an introduction to this group.
Learn about Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects by checking out recordings of our webinar series:
- Hardware design of camera traps for moth monitoring
- Assessing the effectiveness of these autonomous systems in real-world settings, and comparing results with traditional monitoring methods
- Designing machine learning tools to process camera trap data automatically
- Developing automated camera systems for monitoring pollinators
- India-focused projects on insect monitoring
Meet the rest of the group and introduce yourself on our welcome thread - https://www.wildlabs.net/discussion/welcome-autonomous-camera-traps-insects-group
Group curators
- @tom_august
- | he/him
Computational ecologist with interests in computer vision, citizen science, open science, drones, acoustics, data viz, software engineering, public engagement
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December 2023
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hey there @JakeBurton , sorry, I did not see your message! Why don't you shoot me an email with some tentative availability to luca.pegoraro (at) wsl.ch, and we take it from... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 1 day 6 hours ago | |
Very useful! Thanks a lot! |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 3 weeks ago | |
Gotcha, well I look forward to seeing future iterations and following along with your progress!! |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, AI for Conservation, Emerging Tech, Open Source Solutions | 4 weeks ago | |
More cool things surrounding the Mothbox project keep happening! Here’s a recap of cool developments over the past month!New Teammate! Bri... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 4 weeks 1 day ago | |
Greetings Everyone, We are so excited to share details of our WILDLABS AWARDS project "Enhancing Pollinator Conservation through Deep... |
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AI for Conservation, Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 1 month 1 week ago | |
For our [mothbox project](https://forum.openhardware.science/c/projects/mothbox/73) we are programming pijuices and pis to automatically... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 2 months ago | |
Hi, I made a little utility script that folks here might find useful (or might have MUCH BETTER VERSIONS OF! and if so, let me know!) ... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 2 months 2 weeks ago | |
We did some more testing with the Mothbeam in the forest. It's the height of dry season right now, so not many moths came out, but the mothbeam shined super bright and attracted a... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 3 months ago | |
Hi Danilo, yes just in time ;-) |
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Camera Traps, Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 3 months 2 weeks ago | |
Yep, here:Currently it only installs on older Jetsons as in the coming weeks I’ll finish the install code for current jetsons.Technically speaking, if you were an IT specialist... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Camera Traps | 4 months ago | |
Great work! I very much look forward to trying out the MothBeam light. That's going to be a huge help in making moth monitoring more accessible.And well done digging into the... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 4 months ago | |
The preprint to our camera trap paper is now available at bioRxiv. |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 5 months 1 week ago |
Q&A: UK NERC £3.6m AI (image) for Biodiversity Funding Call - ask your questions here
13 September 2023 4:10pm
Wisconsin - Insect Light Trap
18 September 2023 5:34am
Best Material for Moth Lighting?
9 September 2023 1:46am
9 September 2023 5:22am
Plasticy substances like polyester can be slippery, so I imagine that's why cotton is most often used. White is good for color correction, while still reflecting light pretty well. When I've had the option I've chosen high thread count cotton sheets, so the background is smoothest and even the tiniest arthropods are on a flat background, not within contours of threads. Main problem with cotton is mildew and discoloration.
That being said, I haven't actually done proper tests with different materials. Maybe a little side project once standardized light traps are a thing?
Improving the generalization capability of YOLOv5 on remote sensed insect trap images with data augmentation
31 August 2023 8:29am
Interesting new methods to help improve insect detection
"...this paper proposes three previously unused data augmentation approaches (gamma correction, bilateral filtering, and bit-plate slicing) which artificially enrich the training..."
360 Camera for Marine Monitoring
25 July 2023 8:54am
28 July 2023 7:43pm
Hi Sol,
For my research on fish, I had to put together a low-cost camera that could record video for several weeks. Here is the design I came up with
At the time of the paper, I was able to record video for ~12 hours a day at 10 fps and for up to 14 days. With new SD cards now, it is pushed to 21 days. It costs about 600 USD if you build it yourself. If you don't want to make it yourself, there is a company selling it now, but it is much more expensive. The FOV is 110 degrees, so not the 360 that you need, but I think there are ways to make it work (e.g. with the servo motor).
Happy to chat if you decide to go this route and/or want to brainstorm ideas.
Cheers,
Xavier
3 August 2023 2:32am
Hi Xavier, this is fantastic! Thanks for sharing, the time frame is really impressive and really in line with what we're looking for. I'll send you a message.
Cheers,
Sol
3 August 2023 3:19am
I agree, this would be great for canopy work!
European Forum Alpbach
1 August 2023 5:23pm
Insect camera traps for phototactic insects and diurnal pollinating insects
20 March 2023 9:39am
25 May 2023 7:09am
OK, thanks!
10 July 2023 1:57pm
Hi @abra_ash , @MaximilianPink, @Sarita , @Lars_Holst_Hansen.
I'm looking to train a very compact (TinyML) model for flying pollinator detection on a static background. I hope a network small enough for microcontroller hardware will prove useful for measuring plant-pollinator interactions in the field.
Presently, I'm gathering a dataset for training using a basic motion-triggered video-capture program on a raspberry pi. This forms a very crude insect camera trap.
I'm wondering if anyone has any insights on how I might attract pollinators into my camera field of view? I've done some very elementary reading on bee optical vision and currently trying the following:
Purple and yellow artifical flowers are placed on a green background, the center of the flowers are lightly painted with a UV (365nm) coat.
A sugar paste is added to each flower.
The system is deployed in an inner-city garden (outside my flat), and I regularly see bees attending the flowers nearby.
Here's a picture of the field of view:
Does anyone have ideas for how I might maximise insect attraction? I'm particularly interested in what @abra_ash and @tom_august might have to say - are optical methods enough or do we need to add pheremone lures?
Thanks in advance!
Best,
Ross
20 July 2023 4:40pm
Hi Ross,
Where exactly did you put the UV paint? Was it on the petals or the actual middle of the flowers?
I would recommend switching from sugar paste to sugar water and maybe put a little hole in the centre for a nectary. Adding scent would make the flowers more attractive but trying to attract bees is difficult since they very obviously prefer real flowers to artificial ones. I would recommend getting the essential oil Linalool since it is a component of scented nectar and adding a small amount of it to the sugar water. Please let us know if the changes make any difference!
Kind Regards,
Abra
Welcome to the Autonomous camera traps for insects group!
1 August 2022 10:52am
9 May 2023 12:19pm
Hi Peter,
EcoAssist looks really cool! It's great that you combined every step for custom model training and deployment into one application. I will take a deeper look at it asap.
Regarding YOLOv5 insect detection models:
- Bjerge et al. (2023) released a dataset with annotated insects on complex background together with three YOLOv5 models at Zenodo.
- For a DIY camera trap for automated insect monitoring, we published a dataset with annotated insects on homogeneous background (flower platform) at Roboflow Universe and at Zenodo. The available models that are trained on this dataset are converted to .blob format for deployment on the Luxonis OAK cameras. If you are interested, I could train a YOLOv5 model with your preferred parameters and input size and send it to you in PyTorch format (and/or ONNX for CPU inference) to include in your application. Of course you can also use the dataset to train the model on your own.
Best,
Max
11 May 2023 4:59pm
Hi Max, thanks for your reply! I'll have a look and come back to you.
19 July 2023 11:08am
Greetings, everyone! I'm thrilled to join this wonderful community. I work as a postdoctoral researcher at MeBioS KU Leuven having recently completed my PhD on "Optical insect identification using Artificial Intelligence". While our lab primarily focuses on agricultural applications, we're also eager to explore biodiversity projects for insect population estimation, which provides crucial insights into our environment's overall health.
Our team has been developing imaging systems that leverage Raspberry Pi's, various camera models, and sticky traps to efficiently identify insects. My expertise lies in computer science and machine learning, and I specialize in building AI classification models for images and wingbeat signals. I've worked as a PhD researcher at a Neurophysiology lab in the past, as well as a Data Scientist at an applied AI company. You can find more about me by checking my website or my linkedin.
Recently, I've created a user-friendly web-app (Streamlit) which is hosted on AWS (FastAPI) that helps entomology experts annotate insect detections to improve our model's predictions. You can find some examples of this work here: [link1] and [link2]. And lastly, for anyone interested in tiling large images for object detection or segmentation purposes in a fast and efficient way, please check my open-source library "plakakia".
I'm truly excited to learn from and collaborate with fellow members of this forum, and I wish you all the best with your work!
Yannis Kalfas
Tools for automating image analysis for biodiversity monitoring
12 July 2023 4:50pm
New collaboration network - Computer vision for insects
26 June 2023 2:36pm
The Wildlife Society Conference
19 June 2023 5:59am
Wildlife Monitoring Engineer
8 June 2023 4:54pm
Capture And Identify Flying Insects
30 December 2022 7:34pm
3 January 2023 1:55pm
This sounds like an interesting challenge. I think depth of focus and shutter speeds are going to be challenging. You'll need a fast shutter speed to be able to get shape images of insects in flight. Are you interested in species ID or are you more interested in abundance. having a backboard on the other side of the hotel would be a good idea to remove background clutter from your images.
19 May 2023 8:18am
Hi there,
I am also trying to get some visuals from wildlife cameras of insects visiting insect hotels. Was wondering if you had gained any further information on which cameras might be used for testing this?
Postdoc for image-based insect monitoring with computer vision and deep learning
9 May 2023 12:27pm
What is the best light for attracting moths?
17 October 2022 3:12pm
13 January 2023 12:33pm
We have also thought about these sorts of things. We have chosen to keep the light on continuously for the night, but turn it off before dawn to allow the moths to fly away before predators arrive.
We are going to be trying out the EntoLEDs and LepiLEDs in Panama in the last two weeks of January, I'll post here on my thoughts.
15 April 2023 9:15pm
We are testing several cheap 365 +395 nm Bright LEDs here in Panama over the next month
5 May 2023 4:59pm
Would be great to hear more. We found that the lepiLED was great! The ento mini did not attract as much, but if compensated with many nights of deployment it would probably work okay.
Hack a momentary on-off button
15 April 2023 9:21pm
21 April 2023 2:30pm
Hi @hikinghack ,
If I am understanding correctly, you want to be able to have the UV lights come on and go off at a certain time (?) and emulate the button push which actually switches them on and off? Is the momentary switch the little button at the top of the image you attached? Is it going to be cotrolled by a timer or a microcontroller at all? Sorry for all the questions, but I am not 100% clear on exactly what you are after. In the meantime, I've linked to a pretty decent tutorial on the process of hacking a momentary switch with a view to automating it with an Arduino microcontroller board, although it sort of assumes a bit of knowledge of electronics (e.g. MOSFETS/transistors) in certain places.
Alternatively, this tutorial is also good, with good explanations throughout:
If neither of these help, let me know and there might be some easier instructions I can put together.
All the best,
Rob
22 April 2023 3:04am
Hi Andrew,
If I understand you correctly, you want to turn on the LEDs when USB power is applied. The easiest way I can see to do this is to reroute the red wire to USBC VBUS, via an appropriate current limiting resistor. This bypasses all the electronics in your photo.
You could insert the current limiting resistor in the USB cable for better heat dissipation, or use a DC-DC constant current source instead of a resistor if power consumption is a concern.
22 April 2023 7:45am
Further to @htarold 's excellent suggestion, you can replace that entire PCB with a simple USB breakout board (e.g. USB micro attached below) by removing the red wire and attaching it to VCC on the breakout board, and removing and attaching the black wire to GND.
Camera traps, AI, and Ecology
14 April 2023 10:08am
7 June 2023 9:42am
1 August 2023 10:46am
1 September 2023 8:06am
Scaling up insect monitoring using computer vision
6 April 2023 7:06pm
Who's going to ESA in Portland this year?
31 March 2023 9:27am
4 April 2023 9:58am
That sounds great. I think you should encourage people to bring a bit of tech with them, can be a good conversation starter/ice-breaker
4 April 2023 4:04pm
Good idea! I've got a ransom assortment of different acoustic recorders I can bring along
5 April 2023 11:58pm
Indeed, I'll be there too! I like to meet new conservation friends with morning runs, so I will likely organize a couple of runs, maybe one right near the conference, and one somewhere in a nearby park where we can look for wildlife. The latter would probably be at an obscenely early hour, so we can drive somewhere, ideally see elk (there are elk within 25 minutes of Portland!), and still get back in time for the morning sessions.
Camera to follow wasps/attach on wasps
9 March 2023 5:16am
11 March 2023 2:44am
Hi @Lars_Holst_Hansen @tom_august
The link to the video is amazing. Thank you for it.
The wasps that I am working on, are solitary. So, basically it is just this one female that builds the entire nest. Like what you (@tom_august) mentioned, the best option would be to keep a running camera at the nest to record the whole process of nest building. Having one placed inside will be difficult because even if we do work out a way to have lighting inside the nest, the light might be detrimental to the developing larva inside. Hence, it is likely not to be of any benefit.
I am totally smitten by the idea of having a sensor on the wasp body to track where it goes! We could get to know how far it travels to bring the prey and also to collect soil.
14 March 2023 1:30pm
@ShwetaMukundan I just saw this thesis published on tracking bees. Maybe you could use the same method?
30 March 2023 1:14pm
Hi @ShwetaMukundan,
this could be interesting for you:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.abb0839
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwiHf2T9bLU
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/13/us/murder-hornet-track-washington-trnd/index.html
All from this working group:
https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~gshyam/
Exploring storage options for mass data collection
22 March 2023 3:20am
22 March 2023 7:36pm
Hi Adam!
I mostly live within the ecoacoustics space so I'll just speak on the hydrophone part of your request; Arbimon is a free web/cloud-based platform with unlimited storage for audio files. We've got an uploader app as well for mass-uploading lots of files. There's also a bunch of spectrogram visualization/annotation tools and analysis workflows available. It's AWS running under the hood.
I have some experience working directly with AWS & Microsoft Azure, and I've found personally that AWS was more user-friendly and intuitive for the (fairly simplistic) kinds of tasks I've done.
27 March 2023 5:23am
RECORDING Workshop on India-focused projects on insect monitoring
23 March 2023 4:24pm
Recording from our last webinar on India-focused projects on insect monitoring, where we had researchers of Indian origin or researchers working in Indian organisations present their work on insect monitoring.
Catch up with The Variety Hour: March 2023
23 March 2023 11:09am
Monitoring airborne biomass
14 March 2023 10:30am
14 March 2023 1:34pm
Looks like you want to have a read of this thread:
20 March 2023 2:44pm
Our project in very short is, setting up a sensor network for monitoring airborne biomass, mainly insects, birds and bats in near realtime, and to develop a forecast model to be used for mitigation with respect various types of human-wildlife conflicts (e.g. wind power, pesticide application, aviation). Our expertise is mainly in radar monitoring, but we aim on add insect camera information to be merged with the quantitative biomass measeurments by radar.
Workshop V: India-focused projects on insect monitoring
1 March 2023 10:00am
Tropical pilot of insect camera traps
22 February 2023 12:17pm
AMI-trap unboxing - Automated moth monitoring system
1 December 2022 9:44am
20 February 2023 4:59pm
Here is the website where you can find more info about tue AMI trap.
https://www.ceh.ac.uk/ukceh-ami-trap-automated-monitoring-insects
20 February 2023 5:29pm
This video is so great - I don't know what I was imagining that you were building, but this is so much bigger and more involved than whatever I was vaguely thinking. Really cool to see!
Side comment - could we make conservation tech unboxings a thing?
Job: Building a network of conservation tech across continents
2 February 2023 1:50pm
Solar panels in the tropics
26 January 2023 12:28am
27 January 2023 1:23pm
Hi Tom,
I'm with Akiba, you have to test. A collaborator has deployed solar-augmented kit in secondary jungle and some of them got enough light, and others didn't, so it can work. The open circuit voltage of solar panels doesn't change a whole lot in dim light, but the current drops drastically. So you would choose an oversize panel of the same voltage (or a bit higher).
Thanks
27 January 2023 3:56pm
I've been intrigued by this topic. Thinking about ways you could use drones or some kind of launcher to deploy panels above the canopy. Sadly I live in the great white north so I have no way of testing any concepts. Maybe even some kind of solar balloon that could float above the canopy. Interesting design problem.
30 January 2023 10:10am
Hey Tom,
Since the output is dependent on a couple of factors such as the solar irradiance of the place, shading from the canopy, the type of solar panels (mono, poly or amorphous) and orientation of the panels, etc, I'd suggest you use a software to simulate the different parameters to get an almost accurate estimation of the output. You can try PVsyst- it has a free month trial (I haven't used it before but I hear it's great) or any other PV software :)
21 September 2023 4:27pm
This is super cool! Me and @Hubertszcz and @briannajohns and several others are all working towards some big biodiversity monitoring projects for a large conservation project here in panama. The conservation project is happening already, but hubert starts on the ground work in January and im working on a V3 of our open source automated insect monitoring box to have ready for him by then.
I guess my main question would be if this funding call is appropriate/interested for this type of project? and what types of assistance are possible through this type of funding (researchers? design time? materials? laboratory field construction)