Camera traps have been a key part of the conservation toolkit for decades. Remotely triggered video or still cameras allow researchers and managers to monitor cryptic species, survey populations, and support enforcement responses by documenting illegal activities. Increasingly, machine learning is being implemented to automate the processing of data generated by camera traps.
A recent study published showed that, despite being well-established and widely used tools in conservation, progress in the development of camera traps has plateaued since the emergence of the modern model in the mid-2000s, leaving users struggling with many of the same issues they faced a decade ago. That manufacturer ratings have not improved over time, despite technological advancements, demonstrates the need for a new generation of innovative conservation camera traps. Join this group and explore existing efforts, established needs, and what next-generation camera traps might look like - including the integration of AI for data processing through initiatives like Wildlife Insights and Wild Me.
Group Highlights:
Our past Tech Tutors seasons featured multiple episodes for experienced and new camera trappers. How Do I Repair My Camera Traps? featured WILDLABS members Laure Joanny, Alistair Stewart, and Rob Appleby and featured many troubleshooting and DIY resources for common issues.
For camera trap users looking to incorporate machine learning into the data analysis process, Sara Beery's How do I get started using machine learning for my camera traps? is an incredible resource discussing the user-friendly tool MegaDetector.
And for those who are new to camera trapping, Marcella Kelly's How do I choose the right camera trap(s) based on interests, goals, and species? will help you make important decisions based on factors like species, environment, power, durability, and more.
Finally, for an in-depth conversation on camera trap hardware and software, check out the Camera Traps Virtual Meetup featuring Sara Beery, Roland Kays, and Sam Seccombe.
And while you're here, be sure to stop by the camera trap community's collaborative troubleshooting data bank, where we're compiling common problems with the goal of creating a consistent place to exchange tips and tricks!
Header photo: ACEAA-Conservacion Amazonica
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PhD student using Geo-AI and remote sensing to address environmental problems
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- @eliminatha
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Passionate wildlife researcher dedicated to uncovering the secrets of the natural world via the lens of camera traps. With a sharp eye for detail and a strong commitment to wildlife conservation.
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Wildlife conservationist
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- @Amitkaushik
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University of Georgia (UGA)
Environmental anthropologist; An interdisciplinary Ph.D. student, bridging conservation science, policies, and social justice
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Data has been my passion and i enjoy working with data while bringing value to the business. Data engineer with 7+ years of experience Eager to support with expert analytical skills to advance the companys business operations and strategic initiative.
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- @kbubnicki
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Ecologist, data scientist, and programmer with over 13 years of professional experience. Open source and Linux enthusiast. Researcher at the Mammal Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, and CEO of the Open Science Conservation Fund.
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- @JoãoVieira
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Conservation biologist. Iberian wolf monitoring field technician. Master`s on bear`s movement ecology.
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Panthera
Director of Conservation Technology at Panthera
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- @waltertortuga
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Universidad San Francisco de Quito
I'm a professor and researcher focusing on carnivore conservation in tropical landscapes.
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- @msgunther1
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Micaela Szykman Gunther is a Professor in the Department of Wildlife at Cal Poly Humboldt. She applies studies on animal behavior of (mostly) carnivores and (some) ungulates to inform management of wildlife species.
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Are you creative, love new challenges and have experience developing software? The Wildlife Insights team is hiring! Join a diverse team of ecologists, data scientists, engineers and machine learning experts to protect...
10 August 2022
Press Release for International Tiger Day – July 29th, 2022: For the first time ever, wild tigers and their prey have been detected by AI-powered, cryptic cameras that transmit the images to the cell phones and...
5 August 2022
Careers
WCS Canada is seeking a Data Technician with a keen eye for detail to support its Wolverine Conservation Program. The Data Technician will be responsible for classifying wildlife photos taken with motion-sensor cameras...
29 July 2022
Two postdoc positions are now accepting applications for an NSF-funded project integrating data from museums, iNaturalist, and camera trapping data from the Snapshot USA annual survey.
11 July 2022
Careers
The Survey Coordinator is a 3 year role that will assist Program Managers in recruiting. training and retaining participants in a nation-wide camera trapping program
9 June 2022
Microchip has just announced the 1 GHz SAMA7G54 single-core Arm Cortex-A7 microprocessor (MPU) with MIPI CSI-2 and parallel camera interfaces, as well as up to four I2S, one SPDIF transmitter and receiver, and a 4-...
3 June 2022
30 May 2022
Check out this round-up of three of the latest conservation tech studies and news. See more conservation tech news by subscribing to our bi-monthly digest.
24 March 2022
We're proud to introduce the first WILDLABS On the Edge Fellows for 2022, Loretta Schindlerova and Meredith Palmer! Working alongside expert Edge Impulse mentors, these two fellows will use embedded machine learning to...
10 February 2022
This article argues for a conservation method that integrates monitoring technology and community knowledge. Focusing on pangolins, the most trafficked animals globally, the study combines camera trap data from the...
20 December 2021
Camera trap wildlife surveys can generate vast amounts of imagery. A key problem in the wildlife ecology field is that vast amounts of time is spent reviewing this imagery to identify the species detected. Valuable...
20 December 2021
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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@pvlun Thank you for the pointer to keep the frame level detections. I'll give it a try next week.@dmorris Thanks for the description of MDs video processing. I didn't even... |
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Camera Traps | 4 hours 40 minutes ago | |
Hi AlexThank you so much for the imput 🙏 |
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Camera Traps | 2 days 10 hours ago | |
Depending on how much drift there is it may be a fixed offset caused by the timer not restarting until you have finished puttin gin al the settings. You set the time, then do all... |
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Camera Traps | 1 week ago | |
Thank you for elaborating, @evebohnett ! And for the heads ups! |
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Camera Traps, Drones | 1 month ago | |
[oops, the same reply got submitted twice and there doesn't seem to be a "delete" button] |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps | 1 month 2 weeks ago | |
Hi @zhongqimiao ,Might you have faced such an issue while using mega detectorThe conflict is caused by:pytorchwildlife 1.0.2.13 depends on torch==1.10.1pytorchwildlife 1.0.2.12... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Open Source Solutions | 1 month 1 week ago | |
Thanks, and that's a match! All these pictures are from a lab experiment and formated with AmphIdent. We took weekly belly pictures of several larvae. The aim of this google... |
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Camera Traps, Data management and processing tools, Software and Mobile Apps | 1 month 2 weeks ago | |
Hi, this is pretty interesting to me. I plan to fly a drone over wild areas and look for invasive species incursions. So feral hogs are especially bad, but in the Everglades there... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Open Source Solutions, Software and Mobile Apps | 1 month 2 weeks ago | |
Hi everyone!@LashaO and @holmbergius from the Wild Me team at ConservationX Labs gave a superb talk at last month's Variety Hour,... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps | 1 month 2 weeks ago | |
Can't beat Dan's list! I would just add that if you're interested in broader protected area management, platforms like EarthRanger and SMART are amazing, and can integrate... |
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Data management and processing tools, Camera Traps, Conservation Tech Training and Education | 1 month 2 weeks ago | |
EcoAssist is an application designed to streamline the work of ecologists dealing with camera trap images. It’s an AI platform that... |
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Software and Mobile Apps, AI for Conservation, Camera Traps | 2 months ago | |
Hi @Alasdair Great to hear from you! Thanks for the comment and for those very useful links (very interesting). And for letting @Rob_Appleby know. I can't wait to hear... |
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Emerging Tech, Camera Traps, Conservation Tech Training and Education | 2 months 1 week ago |
Cellular camera trap antennas - animal proofing?
27 November 2017 3:10pm
Advice and construction of camera traps.
8 May 2019 9:32am
18 June 2019 7:09am
here is there first publication and a test camera that theyre using.
https://www.wool.com/globalassets/start/about-awi/publications/beyond-the-bale-75-june-2018.pdf
18 June 2019 4:55pm
Hi Toby, hi all,
I've been keeping very quiet about Instant Detect 2.0 on WildLabs as we wanted to ensure we didn't generate any hype or make any promises that we cannot fulfil....but I think we will have something that fits this brief almost exactly relatively soon and it would be a shame for the same work to be replicated.
I have just returned from Kenya where I was testing our Instant Detect 2.0 prototypes and I am very pleased to report that the system is now working. We still have some optimisation work to do and we plan to run a number of longer trial deployments over a number of months later in the year to completely identify, and correct the sort of issues that only crop up over time and in the field. We plan to record and publish all the results from these trials.
Once we believe that the system is ready we hope to be able to supply it to the conservation community at a very low rate at the start of next year. Importantly it will be fully certified and legal to use, it is not 'hacky'.
I am in the process of writing a blog about the testing but if you would like to know more perhaps we could have a chat sometime.
Best wishes,
Sam Seccombe
27 June 2019 11:51pm
Adding my 2 cents here... and I'm being generous with the value of my comment, maybe just 1 cent... AI should be able to help a lot with the recognition tasks. Edge Computing AI, done in the camera module might have to be custom developed for the application, but if you have the AI folks available might not be that hard. The trick is finding a very low power, low cost solution. For that, I would recommend maybe looking into SqueezeNet, a super efficient Open Source Deep Neural Net created by UC Berkeley, Stanford and a company called DeepScale. It is small enough and efficient enough that it can run on a smart phone or on the processor of a smart camera.
DeepScale is using it for automotive applications, but it might be a good fit for this kind of application where you want to quickly decide on the edge what data is important and what data you can ignore and only send the important data to the cloud and discard the rest with an extremely high degree of reliability.
Cheers,
Drue
Recordings Available: Camera Trap C.V. Web Conference
6 June 2019 9:59am
Technology companies, FCO, and conservation NGOs come together to scale technology solutions to end wildlife crime
4 June 2019 12:00am
Technology lab focused on wildlife protection opens on Ol Pejeta Conservancy
31 May 2019 12:00am
Paper: Time-lapse photography to study colonial animals
11 April 2019 12:34pm
29 May 2019 11:02am
Thanks for sharing. This is going to be very helpful with my on-going design project!
Speed camera: Help needed to get traffic data
10 May 2019 5:26pm
16 May 2019 7:24pm
Hi Greg,
You are getting some great technical advice from folks a lot more qualified than me. But as I read through everything, I see you are potentially wanting to use your solution for citing violations. Whatever solution you install needs to be "future proof" for this from the start. Not sure how that would work where you are (Zimbabwe, I believe?), but usually the accuracy of the speed reading and the vehicle identification has to be beyond reproach. Calibration and accuracy, data integrity, etc., all need to be considered.
I would at least look into a buy vs. make decision (or a hybrid of the two) before committing to a completely homegrown solution. It sounds like you only want to install one system. You can find small but acurate radar systems and cameras pretty readily on amazon if you wanted a hybrid solution, or you could look into any one of the dozens of companies who make traffic speed monitoring equipment. You already have a place to install, so that helps. Some systems would be too expensive for your budgets or your needs, but some would be pretty reasonable. Furthermore, those companies could potentially be enticed to provide a system at a substantial discount if they can consider it a charitable contribution. But I'm just thinking out loud here, and maybe it would be difficult for these companies to ship a system to Zimbabwe.
Just my 2 cents.
Drue
17 May 2019 7:43am
Dear Drue
You are definitely correct regarding the need for any system to be reasonably accurate and very accurate should citations start to be issued. That actually was why I like the german system http://raserabwehr.de as it seems slightly more full proof than working on Doppler. If you could point me in the right direction for what you find on Amazon that would be great but as a package. The main thing is it must be easy to install and at a price that does the job.
Initially our intention will be to use it to monitor the road so we can work out which groups to target for awareness campaigns, citations would be probably the last on our list.
Anyway thanks for your thoughts and if you come up with something do let us know.
18 May 2019 12:12am
Hi Greg,
Indeed, the German solution you identified might be a better solution than what I had found on Amazon, which were mostly Doppler solutions, and thinking more about it, would not give you the ability to do long term data analytics on the traffic patterns, which might be important to achieving your objectives. A few alternatives to the German solution would be:
https://enforcementlogix.com (Canadian)
https://www.atsol.com/solutions/speed-safety/ (US)
Good luck,
Drue
WILDLABS TECH HUB Showcase
17 May 2019 12:00am
Technology for Wildlife and the Looming Spectre of E-Waste
3 May 2019 12:00am
ST60 Contactless Connection over 60GHz short range RF module
26 April 2019 10:16am
Who can construct an experimental camera trap device?
11 April 2019 9:59pm
15 April 2019 4:50pm
@arky I'm chatting with Akiba tomorrow and with touch base with you after our conversation. Thanks for your interest!
17 April 2019 9:49am
Morning all - I'm new here and I'm just getting my feet wet as I look around the issues du jour.
Thinking about this proposition (a detection and response combination) and its use in aversion measures (example - discourage the carnivore from following the track to the village), it may be worth bearing in mind an architecture where the detection and response systems are logically separable, so that although they CAN be run as a single physical unit, they could also relatively simply be evolved to support a two-station (or more) model where a "guard" detector sets off an "alarm" response in one or more other units.
All it means in design terms is that the two logical sub-systems (detect and respond) communicate via a message-oriented interface rather than being tightly integrated through, say, shared memory.
19 April 2019 10:32am
Thanks Andy, I didn't realize the potenial of such solution in aversion measures.
Discussing an Open Source Camera Trap Project
2 April 2019 2:49am
3 April 2019 8:11am
What avout the open source OpenMV? It looks like most of the general requirements are met with this platform?
3 April 2019 10:46am
Hi Tim.
The OpenMV is quite interesting and I haven't thought of it for a camera trap application. It's quite useful for machine learning operations, but the camera resolution is 320x240 color or 640x480 grayscale which is a bit on the low side. That's the equivalent of 0.3 MP. The main reason for the low resolution however is that they focus more on the machine learning algorithms and video capture rather than still images. For still images, I think it'd be nice to take advantage of the 5MP cameras on up to the 10+ MP cameras for a flexible camera trap system. I'll be doing animal population surveys in the forest and mountain we manage which would mainly consist of still photos.
As an off-the-shelf solution, Arducam actually has quite good specs. There are potentially other issues such as how long it takes to get the picture off the camera or take consecutive photos. The FPGA code is also not open but it might be a good starting point to a fully open camera trap system.
Akiba
19 April 2019 10:30am
Perhaps the new generation of low-power and high performance boards based on RISC V might allow us to build camera traps that could handle high resolution imagery.
Has anyone got their hands on these boards yet?
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sipeed-maix-the-world-first-risc-v-64-ai-module#/
Camera-trapping best-practices
15 June 2016 4:25pm
5 February 2019 11:59am
Hi everyone,
I thought I'd update this thread, because the results of our camera trap survey have finally(!) been written up and published.
See the article Camera‐trapping version 3.0: current constraints and future priorities for development, lead by @P.Glover.Kapfer .
We cover a lot in there, so hopefully there's something interesting/useful for everyone.
Fire away with any Q's or discussion
Thanks
Ollie
29 March 2019 11:09am
Hi Ollie
As a newbie to camera trap data, this makes interesting reading.
Just to check my understanding on terminology, in Figure 5, the reference to "Automatic filtering of blanks" - did that refer to eliminating false positives, so reducing the number of images that are not of interest ?
Andy
16 April 2019 12:58pm
Hi Andy, yep you've got that exactly right. False positives.
Glad you found it interesting. Thanks,
Ollie
#Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge: Our Favourites from 2019
3 March 2019 12:00am
Arribada Initiative Update: Testing our prototype thermal cameras with elephants in India
1 March 2019 12:00am
Getting up close and personal with Antarctica's orcas
4 February 2019 12:00am
Troubleshooting: Trophy Cam Agressor
26 November 2018 6:53pm
25 January 2019 3:21am
Ok no problem Peter. My colleague Neil Jordan works in Botswana, as does Lucy Ransome (who is heading there in April). Otherwise, do you have a contact I can send it to so they can get it to you?
Cheers and thanks again for the interest.
Rob
26 January 2019 7:24pm
Neil was who I was thinking of. I'm not sure when he plans to next be here.
Peter
26 January 2019 11:39pm
Hi Peter, Ok cool, I'll ask him. I know Lucy is heading back over in a couple of months for sure though, so happy to give it to her for you.
Cheers,
Rob
Troubleshooting: Trophy Camera Brown, Bushnell
14 November 2018 1:01am
26 November 2018 2:57pm
Hi Marisa,
It sounds like the Iris on the lens may be stuck open or its been drifting into an open position (hence why you could see images for a while, but now the image is completely whited out). Is there the ability to alter the lens Iris on the camera?
If you can view what the image looks like directly from the camera (is there an ability to view the fiield of view as you set thecamera up?) you should see the same problem if the Iris is wide open.
Try and isolate the problem step by step to rule out each element of the technical system, whenever you have a technical fault. In this instance there isnt much that you have to play with on a simple trail camera. It would seem the power supply is OK because images are being captured (even though they are whited out) and the PIR is functioning to trigger the images. Check the SD card you are using works OK in another camera to rule that out as the problem too. Are the settings on this camera the same as others that are working correctly? If not alter them too.
There is also a detachable anti reflective LED cover on this Bushnell. Check its not been slipping over time and bouncing the LED illumination directly into the camera lens. That would white images out to varying degrees too.
Best,
Dave
Camera traps designed for animals are now invading human privacy
22 November 2018 12:00am
Canopy cameras shed new light on monkey business in Brazil
22 November 2018 12:00am
Southern right whale superpod blows a hole in the record books
22 November 2018 12:00am
A technologist's journey to protect wildlife: The reality and potential of conservation technology (recorded talk)
22 November 2018 12:00am
Data Needed: Mitigating rhino poaching through multimedia data mining
27 September 2018 3:43pm
28 September 2018 11:54am
Hi Steph,
Yes, my project objective is to detect rhinos and invaders at the sametime through videos not images. The tool is to be used by the game farm owners in order to protect the rhinos, well by invaders I imply the poachers.
Thank you very much for the information, yes I need funding as a realtime data will be advantageous for the better prediction. As we all aware mining videos is challenging as compared to images as videos are un-structured data.
Keep in touch.
Sibusiso
7 October 2018 3:26pm
Greetings Everyone,
Last week I have written to this community with regards to video data for attempting to analyse videos with rhino community, in order to conduct my research for object detection, object behaviour analysis and invader detection in a protected game farm. Seems It might take time to get such data, I wish to state it clear that the idea is to understand object detection, invader detection and behaviour analysis for wildlife animals and I focused on rhinos because thats what is dangered in my country (South Africa).
Nontheless, if now we dont have specific videos for rhinos, I still welcome video data for elephants. If again there are no video data, I can work on the images of both rhinos and elephants. As we know videos are just a set of continous images linked. For me to conduct my PhD research I depend on data and surely as the project progress, maybe we might find one or two videos that can use to justify my solution. So in simple, anyone who has elephant or rhino images can assist, as both of this wild animals are attcked by poachers for various reasons.
As the objective is to mitigate the poaching of the wild animals through multimedia data mining.
Please assist a fellow researcher...:)
Thanking you in advanced.
Regards
Sibusiso
25 October 2018 1:44am
Hi Sibusiso,
Are you looking for huge data sets or would vacation pictures (mostly Uganda) of elephants be of any help to you?
Cheers, Nigel
Drones, Orangutans, and Strangler Figs in Malaysian Borneo
22 October 2018 12:00am
Biology Undergrad Attempts Automated Species Recognition Using MacBook Air and Google
1 October 2018 12:00am
Recommendations Needed: Submersible Camera Traps
13 July 2018 3:15pm
13 August 2018 8:50pm
Hi @Chloe+Aust - great to see that you've found the right GSM camera trap for your needs. I was following this thread with interest as well: https://www.wildlabs.net/community/thread/388. A friend who works with underwater equipment said that he had some ideas. I'll put you in touch - it would be great if you can discuss via this thread so others can see his recommendations as well.
14 August 2018 1:38am
Hi Chole, there is a fellow named Sebastian Kennerknecht who is a camera trap wizzard. He has done a ton of work for Panthera. He might be a guy you want to speak with. You can find him on FB or I can privatley connect you. And, we should put your findings on the forum here so everyone can benefit.
24 August 2018 3:51pm
Amaxing, thank you! We had to put them out already so have gone with the super-tech solution of a *very* high pole for now but will look at speaking to Sebastian, or with your contact Rachel if that fails. Thank you so much! Chloe
Call for citizen scientists to help unravel the mysteries of South Sudan’s forests
22 August 2018 12:00am
The unexpected difficulty of getting videos from the field
25 July 2018 12:00am
New Paper: Automatically identifying, counting, and describing wild animals in camera-trap images with deep learning
7 June 2018 5:04pm
20 July 2018 3:58pm
Thanks, Steph. The camera trap ML nerds among us will have seen drafts of this kicking around in pre-print for a while now. Very cool to see it out finally.
I'll also draw everyone's attention to another study (involving some of the same authors) which has just come out in draft form: "Machine learning to classify animal species in camera trap images: applications in ecology".
2018 Browning Trail Cameras
27 May 2018 9:30pm
28 June 2019 2:59pm
Hello Sam,
We've had good luck with these:
https://www.covertscoutingcameras.com/shop/covert-accessories/booster-antenna-for-wireless-cameras/
In high baboon areas we'll pass the cable through clear PVC tubing to prevent chewing.
The other thing we'll frequently do in areas we forecast problems is to pre-deploy broken or dummy equipment at the location for a couple of weeks. We find that that deploying this "sacrificial" stuff sometimes reduces interest in the functional equipment after it is deployed after this initial period of acclimation.
Eric