Hi Erika, 

Suggestions coming in over on Twitter: 

I store my Cameras in one gallon plastic bags with a zipper lock. Most cameras will fit in that size bag. There is a note card that goes in the bag, The note card lasts longer in the bag and does not smear which it will if you write on the outside and is very important if you are running a lot of cameras. You can make a nice note card with a word processor and lay out everything you want to note. The Notes can be whatever you want to track but the most useful is the brand and model, the date the camera was purchased, The Date it went into the storage bag, Notes on if the camera has been updated. The camera number, the password if the camera needs a password, The person who put the camera in the bag with their full name and the date, A note on how the camera did on it's last deployment, Camera works fine, YES, or whatever might be wrong is listed. I would also list any special features that the camera can perform, such has WIFI enable, Cell Camera, etc. I also make sure the Cameras number is easy to see on the card. When the cameras go out they should have a camera number on the inside of the camera so you can track it in your field notes and make sure all the bags come back from deployment so they are ready for when the cameras come back in from the field. 

The batteries are removed from the camera, When I bring a camera in from the field I test each battery with a  battery tester. If all the batteries are still good that information is noted on the bag card that the batteries were tested and their strength. Keeping the batteries with the camera keeps you from mixing batteries of various strengths. Remove any bad batteries and note if a new one has been added. If you decide to replace all the batteries, Note on the card that they are NEW and their strength because all new batteries should be tested to make sure you did not get a bad one. If batteries are not available put that on the Note card, NOTE, removing the batteries will usually require all the settings to be redone, I still put on the note card, CAMERA NEEDS NEW SETTINGS. 

I also put in the SD Cards, with SD size on the Camera Card. Some of my older cameras only take a 32 gig or smaller, while my new cameras take 125 Gig SD cards. If putting out a camera for a very long run I want to grab one that can take a large SD card. I usually have two SD cards for each camera so they can be swapped out but keep the same cards. Put on the Camera Card that the SD card should reformatted before the next deployment or you can reformat the SD card before the batteries are removed, but NOTE on the camera card that the SD cards are formatted and ready to go. This is a good idea so you know before storage that the SD cards work. 

Last I add one packet of Silica Dry packs. The bags are 5 grams. I use DRY and DRY. I got them in a 50 packet bag from Amazon, about 8 bucks. They are cheap and do a great job of removing all the moisture from the Camera, batteries, SD card, and keeps them dry for even very very long storage. 

Hope this helps, when the camera number goes up the more you need to keep them organized. 

I forgot to add, I put the cameras in the bag with the doors or camera halves OPEN so the moisture does not stay in a closed camera, we want everything to stay dry. 

Hi Ann

I'm afraid I don't know anything about trap tagger, but if you are looking to analyse camera trap data, and you are in Sub-Saharan Africa, you could also give WildID a try.

WildID does automatic species recognition in camera trap images, and then allows you to further annotate and tag your images with notes and other features. It works for 70 Southern African species, and the AI model was trained using images from Kenya and Tanzania, among other African countries.

You can register for a free trial of WildID at https://www.wildid.app - it would just take you a couple of minutes to register and get your first few images uploaded and detected, so you could see how it might work for you. 

There is a comprehensive User Guide at https://userguide.wildid.app

I would also be very happy to give you a demo or a training session, and take you through the software. You can contact me on [email protected] 

Hope this is helpful, and good luck with your project.

Kind regards, Kate

Hi Ann,

The best thing to do is contact Nic and Hannes directly: 

https://wildeyeconservation.org/contact-us/

They can provide you with an overview of the software and answer any questions you have. I've heard good things from a couple of others who have tried out TrapTagger.

Best,

Matt

Hi Yvan, 

I dropped this into the AI for Conservation slack group as well, you got this reply this morning: 

Steph