I'm jupping into the discussion, with a similar objective. I'm looking for a thermal camera trap, (I know cacophony). it would be use to improve invasive speices monitoring especially for rats and feral cats.

Any idea?

Thanks

Hi @mguins , as @kimhendrikse mentioned resolution (and also brand) for thermal cameras can dictate a big jump in price. GroupGets has a budget Lepton (FS - short for 'factory second' I think) if you wanted to check one out: 

Teledyne FLIR LEPTON® FS

Lepton FS is a non-radiometric 160 x 120 resolution micro thermal camera module with reduced thermal sensitivity, reduced scene dynamic range, and up to 3% inoperable pixels but the lowest price ever for a factory Lepton. These units balance performance and price, enabling monitoring applications where radiometry is not required and pixel-level image information is less important than broad thermal data. With the lowest cost per pixel in the Lepton family, low power consumption, and simple integration, Lepton FS provides integrators an appropriate thermal capability for innovative thermal monitoring products in smart building automation, security, occupancy sensing, and more. Just as we were the first place to get FLIR Lepton seven years ago, we are bringing this new Lepton to you first at a highly compelling price to make your thermal imaging application more economically viable. To celebrate, all accessory boards below are 10% off excluding the new tCam-mini Wi-Fi board.   160 x 120 RESOLUTION NON-RADIOMETRIC MICRO THERMAL CAMERA COMMON INTERFACES AND FACTORY SUPPORT TO SHORTEN TIME TO MARKET Standard Lepton mechanical interface, electrical interface, and US-based Technical Services team. 160 x 120 thermal pixel resolution Low operating power – 140 mW typical and 650 mW during shutter event Small 11.8 x 12.7 x 7.2 mm package ACCEPTABLE PERFORMANCE AT DISCOUNTED PRICE Affordable, non-radiometric thermal imagery and data. -10 °C to 350 °C scene dynamic range Thermal sensitivity <75 mK  ≤3% inoperable pixels BUILD INNOVATIVE THERMAL MONITORING SOLUTIONS Build innovative thermal monitoring solutions appropriate for heat, security, and comfort monitoring applications. Home and building automation Heat and occupancy sensing Security and location monitoring   Specifications Overview Sensor technology Uncooled VOx microbolometer Spectral range Longwave infrared, 8 μm to 14 μm Array format 160 x 120, progressive scan Pixel size 12 μm Effective frame rate 8.7 Hz (commercial application exportable) Thermal sensitivity <75mK NEdt Operability Number of non-defective pixels shall be >97% Adjacent clusters, rows, columns may contain defective pixels that are not factory corrected and unable to be corrected. 3% of operability failures allowed. Temperature compensation Automatic. Output image independent of camera temperature. Non-Radiometric Performance While some of the Lepton FS units may output radiometric values per pixel, the Lepton FS units are not guaranteed against any radiometric accuracy and users whom wish to use Lepton FS products for radiometric applications do so at their own risk. Teledyne FLIR and GroupGets will not support questions pertaining to calibrating Lepton FS units. Non-uniformity corrections Integral Shutter Scene dynamic range High Gain Mode: -10 to 140 degrees C typical Low Gain Mode: -10 to 350 degrees C typical Image optimization Factory configured and fully automated FOV - horizontal 57° FOV - diagonal 71° Lens Type f/1.1 Output format User-selectable 14-bit, 8-bit (AGC applied), or 24-bit RGB (AGC and colorization applied) Solar protection Integral Electrical Input clock 25-MHz nominal, CMOS IO Voltage Levels Video data interface Video over SPI Control port CCI (I2C-like), CMOS IO Voltage Levels Input supply voltage (nominal) 2.8 V, 1.2 V, 2.5 V to 3.1 V IO Power dissipation (Typical, room temp) Nominally 150 mW (operating), 650 mW (during shutter event), 5 mW (standby) Mechanical Package dimensions without socket (w x l x h) 11.50 x 12.70 x 6.835 mm Weight 0.91 grams   Environmental Optimum operating temperature range -10C to +65C Non-operating temperature range -40 C to +80 C Shock 1500 G @ 0.4 ms   Part Numbers 500-0771-FS1 Documentation Lepton Google Group Lepton FS Datasheet Lepton Engineering Data Sheet rev 204 Lepton Software Interface Description Document (IDD) rev 303 Advanced Lepton Usage on Windows Getting Started with Lepton on Windows and PureThermal Basic Features Getting Started with the BeagleBone and Breakout Board V2.0 Getting Started with the Raspberry Pi and Breakout Board V2.0 Lepton with Radiometry Quick Start Guide Lepton vs Lepton 3-App Note  Mechanical FLIR Lepton 2.5 and 3.5 3D Model (step) IDD CAD data LEPTON 2.5, 80x60 IDD CAD data LEPTON 3.5, 160x120 IDD CAD data LEPTON 3.1R, 160x120 Software GroupGets GetThermal Viewer (Linux and macOS) FLIR Lepton User App for Windows v1.3.2 PureThermal Firmware FLIR Lepton SDK Development Hardware GroupGets - PureThermal Mini Pro JST-SR GroupGets - PureThermal 3 GroupGets - PureThermal Breakout Board GroupGets - PureThermal Micro Breakout Board GroupGets - PureThermal OpenMV FlyTron - DroneThermal v4 Teledyne FLIR - FLIR Lepton Breakout Board v2.0 danjuliodesigns LLC - tCam Mini v4 danjuliodesigns LLC - gCore OpenMV - FLIR Lepton Adapter Module for OpenMV Cam H7 Tips for integrating Lepton into a Housing Recommended Material PORON® Socket Stack Socket > Lepton > Foam > Window > Enclosure Maximum Force < 1Kg (more force will damage the shutter) The foam must be cut out so that it does not interfere with the mechanical shutter pins. Thickness Depends on the enclosure and spacing, do not exceed 1Kg of force. In the News CNX Software - $99 Lepton FS module cuts the cost of FLIR thermal cameras by half This Model: Lepton FS, 160×120 pixels, 57° with shutter - NOT Radiometric Important Information PureThermal 1/2/3/Mini/Pro with Radiometric FLIR Lepton 2.5, 3.5, 3.1R requires specialized software to show radiometry such as GetThermal. All international customers that are ordering any Thermal Imaging Camera will be required to fill out an End Use Statement document before shipment. Once you place your order we will email you with the document within a few business days. We can only ship FLIR Lepton to North America, Australia, Switzerland,  United Kingdom and the European Union Countries. Any orders with a FLIR Lepton with a delivery address other than those will be canceled and refunded. We are sorry for the inconvenience. Number of non-defective pixels shall be >97% Adjacent clusters, rows, columns may contain defective pixels that are not factory corrected and unable to be corrected. 3% of operability failures allowed. Temperature compensation Automatic. Output image independent of camera temperature. Lepton FS units are not guaranteed against any radiometric accuracy and users whom wish to use Lepton FS products for radiometric applications do so at their own risk. Teledyne FLIR and GroupGets will not support questions pertaining to calibrating Lepton FS units. RoHS Certificate of Compliance European Directive No 2015/863 Declaration of Compliance REACH Regulation (EC) No. 1907/2006 California Proposition 65 Declaration ECCN: CAM 6A993A HTSUS: 9027.50.4020 Country of Origin: USA Part Number: 500-0771-FS1

GroupGets

They also have a bunch of other Flir products and boards for interfacing with Leptons etc., so worth a browse of the shop. It could also be worth taking a look at Seek modules, some of which @Alasdair has experience with : (e.g. 

S314SPX Mosaic Core Starter Kit 320x240, 57HFOV, FF

They also have modules you can connect to a mobile phone: 

Compact for iOS

@TopBloke I'd be very keen to see your Lepton camera trap too! 

Cheers,

Rob

At Ol Pejeta, through the Kifaru Rising project, we have 19 FLIR thermal cameras that we use to address poaching as a conservation challenge.

The cameras have been deployed along a key fence line and are monitored 24/7 by a dedicated team.

The cameras have inbuilt analytics capabilities which allow us to design virtual fences/boundaries. 

An Alert is  generated whenever a human or vehicles crosses the virtual fence. Following an alert, appropriate ranger action is undertaken depending on the video content recorded with each alert.

I think the Alert feature available with these cameras could be leveraged to monitor the wildlife visitor interaction, seeing as a video clip is recorded with each alert, the thermal video clips could be reviewed to assess the wildlife-human interaction effects.

I recently installed and maintained a 12 camera trap arboreal array in Panama. The cams were set at between 12 and 25 meters height. We used rope access to install the cams which took a bit of effort (actually hiking with all the equipment to each remote site took most of the time). Once each cam was installed we left a thin throw line in situ so that when we came to check SD cards and change batteries it was very quick to put up a climbing line and get to the cams. I would estimate around 15 mins tops to pull up the climbing line, ascend and do the cam checks and descend again. Climbing up to the cams and visually checking them regularly was worth the small amount of time it took, we managed to save two cams that had been semi opened by inquisitive animals before great damage was done. If we had down loaded data via blue tooth or 4g with out climbing up to the cams we may not have discovered this.

Hi Ben,

If you are able to get the camera above the canopy, or at in a place with some exposure to sunlight, you could consider the Solaris Weapon:

SOLARIS WEAPON 4K TRAIL CAMERA — Alexander Braczkowski

The SOLARIS WEAPON 4K is the flagship trail camera in the SOLARIS range. Founded by scientist and big cat filmmaker Dr Alex Braczkowski, Alex worked with camera trap engineers in China during his postdoc to identify, tweak, and market a camera trap that overcame two issues: the need to constantly ch

Alexander Braczkowski

As it has an inbuilt solar panel and battery, along with Bluetooth and Wifi. And this is way out there, but I've considered a trail camera mounted onto a drone, the latter being able to be remotely powered on and off, for this sort of thing before. I never actually followed through, but in principle, if you could manually install a stable platform and devise some sturdy way of attaching the detaching the drone to and from the platform, you could, in theory, explore this. Maybe bring lots of spares for in-field drone repairs!!

Anyway, enough wacky ideas from me and best of luck with your project.

Cheers,

Rob

Ben, I have just noticed you work at Chester Zoo. 

I am due to be at Welsh Mountain Zoo on Fri 22nd and Sat 23rd giving talks about our Margay project that uses arboreal camera traps in Panama. We will have a bunch of kit with us (climbing kit and camera trap kit), if you can make it there, would be more than happy to have a chat with you about arboreal camera trapping. One of your Chester Zoo colleagues is actually also planning to come. Send me a message if you want more details.

Given your background, thought you might like this image of a green iguana, taken by camera trap at 25 meters. It took us three attempts to get this position right. The first two attempts produced thousands of miss triggers, this final position worked.

And this is a piece of the event reporting page, each of the buttons to the right of the event name can be clicked on to see a video of the event from that particular camera perspective. The whole system is configurable via a gui and has the concept of "state" that can be controlled with mobile phone buttons that control the actions that are executed by input events, which in this case are triggers from the object detector.

And finally for now, the object detectors are wrapped by a python websocket network wrapper to make it easy for the system to use different types of object detectors. Usually, it's about 1/2 a day for me to write a new python wrapper for a new object detector type. You just need to wrap in the network connection and make it conform to the yolo way of expressing the hits, i.e. the json format that yolo outputs with bounding boxes, class names and confidence level.

What's more, you can even use multiple object detector models in different parts of a single captured image and you can cascade the logic to require multiple object detectors to match for example, or a choice from different object detectors.

It's the perfect anti-poaching system (If I say so myself :) )

Frank's idea of using 2 camera traps is inspired!

I've fiddled with cheap camera traps a bit, and some (most?) of them use a low power, inaccurate timer for the time lapse function instead of the accurate real time clock.  This is ok for Michelle's purpose, but not for Nick's as he needs to specify the exact time of day to trigger.

I made this interface to allow a camera trap to be triggered by an external device.  To it you could attach, say, a timer programmed to fire at the desired times, to cause a capture.  A $4 DS3231 RTC module could do the job, after the alarm times have been programmed into it with , for example, an Arduino.

I think this is a known problem with some Bushnell models. The battery connection only needs to be interrupted for an instant (by being moved for example) and the camera resets. If a coin battery, are they still charged?

I am having similar problems with a campark camera. It's more than 4 years old, so it could be the button cell. I am also suspecting that humidity plays a role : the re-set happened a couple of times after long rain periods ( half a day or so ). Perhaps it was coincidence, perhaps some corrosion is going on.

Can you developan eDNA test for sloths? Sample preparation techniques have evolved so that soil and leaf litter samples (or even swabs of tree surfaces) can be tested for the presence of Sloth DNA. Once you identify the trees they are in, you can conduct more intensive searches. Sniffer dogs can be remarkably effective, even if they don't count as tech. Use the dogs to indicate target trees/areas, use the eDNA testing to identify more precise locations, then conduct your canopy search.

DNA testing equipment has come down in price and improved to the point that you can get a DNA profile from a desktop profiler that costs a few thousand dollars. We're hoping to use some of this tech in a project soon, just waiting on a reply from the funding body we applied to.

"The WiFi Solar Camera comes loaded with various features such as live monitoring ( via smartphone app ), motion sensor recording and notification alerts on detected movement, night vision, cloud storage of footage, an audio system to facilitate communication"

WiFi Solar Camera | Wireless CCTV Home Security Systems

If you use the wifi solar camera with Cctv home security systems and that you have wifi then this is the cheapest option to use. Buy now

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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

FishCam: A low-cost open source autonomous camera for aquatic research

We describe the “FishCam”, a low-cost (<500 USD) autonomous camera package to record videos and images underwater. The system is composed of easily ac…

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 

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