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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 Data Normalization Help

Michelle

31 May 2023 2:45pm

Hi all! I am working on a project studying pinniped habitat use in the Eastern US. We set up camera traps across the haul-out areas, set to take 4 images per hour. If a seal...

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Alistair Stewart

3 June 2023 2:11am

I would second this approach and possibly extend this to an abundance "N-mixture" model. Each 15 min image could be considered a 'visit' and covariates such as tide and weather used to describe detectability, while habitat covariates describe the 'haul out sites'. 

There are several assumptions to meet about independence that should be considered and additional analyses that can account for spatial autocorrelation.

A good read is the documentation and vignettes for the R package 'Unmarked'. If you want a deeper understanding the two volumes of 'Applied Hierarchical Modeling in Ecology' by Kery and Royle will answer all your questions. There is also a google group for Unmarked with plenty of helpful contributors if you need help

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discussion

Insect camera traps for phototactic insects and diurnal pollinating insects

Sarah Radford

20 March 2023 9:39am

Hello, we developed an automated camera trap for phototactic insects a few years ago and are planning on further developing our system to also assess diurnal pollinating...

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Abra Ash

12 April 2023 5:10pm

Hi Sarah, 

I will definitely link things once I start publishing. Please let me know how the different colours work for you. 

Good luck!

Abra

Maximilian Pink

15 May 2023 3:07pm

Hi Lars,

We had a couple of test colours in the field for about six weeks. Some look quite good, others are nearly gone. I would recommand to do some pre-testing before you place them in the field for longer and better respay every year. However, the colours I recommanded before still look good, although I should test if they have lost some of their fluorescence.

Best regards,

Max

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Link

Scientists step up hunt for ‘Asian unicorn’, one of world’s rarest animals

Diep

18 May 2023 6:25pm

The saola, also known as the 'Asian unicorn,' remains one of the world's most elusive and rare animals. Conservation organizations, such as the Saola Working Group, operating in Laos and Vietnam, are conducting extensive searches using camera traps and exploring new methods like training dogs to detect saola signs and developing rapid DNA field test kits in order to save this remarkable creature from extinction.

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Link

Camera trap pics of rare species in Vietnam raise conservation hopes

Diep

18 May 2023 6:17pm

Camera traps installed in Vietnam's Phong Dien Nature Reserve have yielded remarkable images of rare and endangered species, igniting optimism for biodiversity conservation in the region. Among the captivating photographs are sightings of muntjac deer, the crested argus, Annamite striped rabbit, and Owston's palm civet. The camera trap images serve as a testament to the presence of these elusive creatures, fueling hope for their conservation.

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discussion

What are the waterfowls?

Li Sun

14 May 2023 3:26pm

I took photos and videos about a lovely couple who has got a new family at Ducks Lock along Oxford Canal. Can anyone tell me the name of waterfowl.

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discussion

Testing Raspberry Pi cameras: Results

Tom August

5 May 2023 5:11pm

So, we (mainly @albags ) have done some tests to compare the camera we currently use in the...

1 0
Maximilian Sittinger

9 May 2023 12:44pm

Hi Tom and Alba,

great comparison! From what distance did you take the images?

It would be interesting to also check the respective power consumption of the cameras while recording images and the latency (how long does it take to save the image in full resolution) on RPi 4/Zero. Also I'm wondering how the slightly improved image quality (e.g. between Pi camera 3 and IMX519) would actually affect classification accuracy during deployment. I'm pretty sure that there will be no difference regarding only detection, and the impact on classification probably depends on the differences between classes.

From some tests that I did with a YOLOv5s-cls classification model, trained on our classification dataset (only group level), I got the feeling that even significant downscaling (50%, so only half of the pixels are "kept" from the original image) will only lead to a minor decrease in classification accuracy. Of course this will depend heavily on the dataset and more classes with finer details/differences will probably be classified with a higher accuracy if you use a higher resolution of the input images.

There is definitely still a lot of potential for testing different recording hardware and its impact on automated detection/classification, especially regarding the trade-off between accuracy, speed, power consumption and disk storage.

Best,
Max

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Link

Collar Tracking vs. Camera Traps for Monitoring Mexican Wolves

Ellie Warren

5 May 2023 9:08pm

This article compares and contrasts the success of their wolf monitoring efforts with both collars and camera traps. The camera traps were intended to help researchers identify individual wolves within the population, but they experienced difficulties identifying both uncollared wolves and those with marked collars.

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discussion

Camera Trap Data Management Survey

Dan Morris

3 May 2023 10:28pm

The Wildlife Insights team is running a survey to learn more about camera trap data management practices, and in particular to understand potential barriers to data sharing...

1
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discussion

AI Animal Identification Models

David Hunter

30 March 2023 5:01am

Hi Everyone,I've recently joined WILDLABS and I'm getting to know the different groups. I hope I've selected the right ones for this discussion...I am interested in AI to identify...

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David Hunter

20 April 2023 12:53am

Thanks Dan, that is very helpful. No zebras here but I did see four deer wandering through the streets this morning. Quite wild at times here!

I am totally willing to try an image classifier if it reports multiple objects it identifies in a scene. I will give this a go.

I think 1 fps would be quite acceptable actually, and in some perspective actually advantageous in reducing how much data is getting logged.

I tried upgrading my existing object detector model to YOLOv8 following the links you sent, but I don't think it is possible to upgrade the model on the framework I'm using (ml5js) so I think I will have to try a different framework.

Thank you.

Bas Michielsen

25 April 2023 2:08pm

Hi David

It appears that you have been looking for existing models, however, most existing models are trained on either COCO or some other very generic dataset. So, if you want to identify just animals, you may be better off training your own model. It seems no one in this thread mentioned yet that it is possible to do transfer learning on existing models, which keeps most of the "visual part" of the model as is, but just changes the classification part so it can identify other things. This way you can take an existing model trained on COCO and in a fraction of the time it takes to train a full model, just retrain that for your animals.

Also have a look at your requirements for the inferencing stage. Some models take long in training but are superfast in inference and others are slow in both cases but very accurate, etc. If you want semi-realtime inferencing, you are probably looking at single shot detectors (SSD), and not RCNNs.

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discussion

Congo Basin activity?

Chris Nicholas

30 March 2023 9:14pm

greetings - I am helping coordinate a visit by the incoming director of national parks for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in mid-late June. He is very interested to...

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chris anderson

25 April 2023 5:08pm

greetings!

 

i sent you a PM regarding this, feel free to contact me however is most convenient for you -

 

regards,

chris 

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discussion

Indigenous groups working with camera traps in Latin America

Talia Speaker

19 April 2023 10:53pm

Does anybody work with or know of Indigenous groups in Latin America who are proficient with camera trapping and using cam trap data for conservation/management action? A...

3 1
Amanda L Gonzales

21 April 2023 1:27pm

Hello,

Happy to put you in contact with some of my grantees working in Mexico who have extensive experience in capacity building for indigenous communities focused in species monitoring, including: Eco-Creando Soluciones, AC, Bosque Antiguo, AC, Bioconciencia, AC. Let me know.

Best,

Amanda

Eric Greenlee

21 April 2023 2:23pm

I've heard that Alianza Ceibo and Amazon Frontlines use camera traps in the Amazonian regions of Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru to monitor poaching and land encroachment. You can reach out to them directly or I can put you in touch with one of their program managers if you'd like (I only have her # and don't want to post her personal info directly on here though).

Talia Speaker

21 April 2023 8:22pm

Great, thank you both! I'll follow up for introductions/ contact info

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discussion

Analyze difference in time events in camera trap data

Adrián Schiavini

14 March 2023 9:50pm

We are studying how foxes and birds feed from feeders aimed at Livestock Protection Dogs in Tierra del Fuego. We want to look at time between visits to assess dependence of...

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Russ Van Horn

24 March 2023 6:20pm

Adrían - You might try looking at the methods for analyzing temporal interactions described in these two papers. These will hopefully provide you a starting point into the literature. Best wishes - Russ

Rahel Sollmann. 2018. A gentle introduction to camera-trap data analysis. African Journal of Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1111/aje.12557
 

Justin P Suraci, et al. 2022. Beyond spatial overlap: harnessing new technologies to resolve the complexities of predator–prey interactions. Oikos. https://doi.org/10.1111/oik.09004

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discussion

Recommendations needed: software for collating camera trap images

M_Bonet

25 October 2020 8:54pm

Just looking for recommendations for collating camera trap images. We will be retrieving 30 cameras in coming weeks and would like to use a program to upload the SD cards directly...

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Devi Hall

28 March 2023 9:32pm

Hey Sami! Not sure what their needs are at WildlifeInsights. But would love to contribute in any capacity. I'm a software developer with a Masters in Zoology and experience Wildlife research. I have worked on several project integrating with TensorFlow and other ML models-including ChatGPT. Any chance they are looking for folks to staff their venture? Cheers!

-Dévi

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discussion

Who's going to ESA in Portland this year?

Tom August

31 March 2023 9:27am

So who is going to be at the Ecological Society of America meeting this year in Portland, August 6-11th?It will be my first...

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Dan Morris

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.

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event

AI for European Wildlife Challenge

Tjomme Dooper

29 March 2023 10:39am

In this Challenge, we will build computer vision models to identify different species of European wildlife on camera trap images, to improve population monitoring.

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Tjomme Dooper

17 April 2023 6:06pm

For everyone who's still on the fence: This is the last week you can apply.
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discussion

Global shortage of Raspberry Pis - What are the alternatives

Tom August

3 November 2022 10:27am

So, there is a global shortage of Raspberry Pis, the open source micro-computer that has been popular amongst open hardware designers and hobbyists alike. Like...

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Devi Hall

28 March 2023 9:37pm

Have you considered Arduinos?

Tom August

29 March 2023 10:13am

UPDATE: The Banana Pi didnt work out for us as it was not possible to track back all the components and ensure that they were responsibly sourced. The Rock board did work for us and we were able to port our system onto this. We will be rolling out units using this over the summer. It also looks like Raspberry Pis are coming back on line and we were able to secure a bulk order for deliver mid-summer

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discussion

Exploring storage options for mass data collection

Adam Roberts

22 March 2023 3:20am

Hi all. I'm currently exploring options for data storage en masse. With our project we will be collecting 24hr hydrophone data, drone video 6hr per day, photography &...

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Carly Batist

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.  

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discussion

Camera trap. Snow Leopard reserve Kyrgyzstan. Solar+4G+Video. System upgrade.

Luciano Foglia

15 December 2022 3:32pm

Hi everyone, My name is Luciano Foglia. I'm working on a project in Central Asia where we need to provide internet access to an area of a mountain range...

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Luciano Foglia

16 March 2023 6:05am

Hi Kumar

I wanted to contact you about the possibility of collaborating in the project I mentioned before. Where is good to contact you? [email protected] ? You can also email me from our website www.baiboosun.com 

Looking forward from hearing from you

Luciano Foglia

 

 

Toby

24 March 2023 9:14pm

Look into evorta.  

It is an Australian company that is doing exactly this.  

You can.

  • Have an offline camera that can be trained to ID specific species, 
  • send you just the photos of those species via satellite 
  • Or if you can get 4g send you all the photos to their online database. 
  • They also have an online database that allows you to analyse the data in real time. 
  • They can also hack normal camera traps so they can send photos back to the main unit to process and send valid photos.  That way you only need one ‘smart’ camera.  All the rest can be your exsisting cameras. You just need to use your sd card slot.  

Here is an article here  

 Best to contact him through email.  

I’ll send it to you privately 

Lars Holst Hansen

25 March 2023 1:11pm

The eVorta website is still VERY empty but will be worth keeping an eye out for for sure. At first, from the notes above, I thought that this was Edge AI but in the article linked to it seems that the ML and animal ID happens after 4G download of the images. 

I will just throw a link to relatively recent paper where a standard cameratrap was "hacked" and Edge AI ID could send alerts via Iridium: Real-time alerts from AI-enabled camera traps using the Iridium satellite network and here is more from some of the authors of that paper: 

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