Hi Patricia,

I think this is likely an issue with the PIR lens positioning. The PIR has detection zones that are designed to maximise image capture of things moving a certain distance away.

A quick fix would be to have the camera trap placed directly above the nests looking straight down. I have seen someone doing this on twitter for invasive species on islands but haven't been able to re-find the tweets. 

I would use a rat substitute for testing, like a tennis ball on a stick. Warm this up in the sun and then insert into the field of view and check if the camera has captured it. You could try this in different orientations and angles to see where the detection zones might be. 

Best wishes,

Sam

Hello

I understand how frustating that can be....I would try with the camera closer. 2.5m seem too far away for rat...specially that it must have some vegetation between. Also think that the suggestion of putting the camera above the nest facing down is also a great idea...

Best of luck...

I have only used Tenergy NiMH rechargeables, these put out 1.2 V. We've used it on Bushnell Trophycam, which have 2x4 battery sets, i.e. you only need 4 batteries for it to have enough voltage, the additional batteries don't increase the voltage, they only prolong working time. So 4x1.2=4.8 V instead of the expected 6 V from alkaline batteries. I would think that Cuddeback has a similar circuit setup, so an external 12 V battery might actually be too much, as some have already pointed out. With regular NiMH batteries what's most important is to get batteries with high mAh. The ones sold commercially usually have very low mAh, so they won't last very long. We have 2400 mAh, I think, and it works reasonably well, they can last for about a month in the field, IR flash works.

While the manufacturer might claim that the camera requires 8xAA at 1.5v each, most likely it will work just fine with NiMH batteries that have nominal voltage of 1.2V.
I have used eneloops with Reconnyx cameras for a long time, as well as with handheld GPSes and a myriad of electronic devices and not once run into trouble because of the lower voltage. Your camera should have a setting in the menu to select NiMH batteries, that will prevent it from shutting down too soon.
I suggest you do your own testing - run 2 cameras one next to another on a 1.5V alkaline battery and a 1.2V NiMH rechargeable one until it switches off and check the voltage on the "empty" cell.

Your issue will likely not be the voltage of the cell, but the current the battery can deliver, as it has to recharge a capacitor in the incadescent flash light. I see that the manufacturer declares up to 20s recharge time for night photos, which is a lot. That is a downside of a colour camera.

I don't know what the best source is for batteries in SA, but if possible, get rechargeable batteries from IKEA (Ladda NiMH batteries). They are rebranded eneloops pro for around 30% less and I am yet to find a better battery for a camera trap. Otherwise, like mentioned before, eneloop pro will be hard to beat for performance and reliability.

Hi seems great and easy to use! Just a question, can the software success to identify the species or "only" categorize animal/ vehicle/human? Can we "trained" the software to detect a specific species?

thank you 

Hi

I just tried and works great, I will include it in my workflow. 

Thanks for your work!

Juan

Important considerations raised by Peter!

In my case it was not important though, as I was using the trap camera in timelapse mode.

In the TrailCamPro link above (comparing FOV and Detection Angle), I see a few "panorama" camera models.  For example, the Moultrie 150i or Moultrie 180 (https://www.moultriefeeders.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=panoramic) - although they are all listed as discontinued.

It seems this might be a solution for Daniela's scenario.

I'm also interested because it could offer more forgiving setup (if the subject does not travel exactly where expected.)

Has anyone here worked with a panoramic camera? What did you find to be their pros/cons?

Hi all,

Just wanted to make you aware, if you weren't already, of this other Wildlabs thread: https://www.wildlabs.net/community/thread/1080. Petar Gyurov (@pepi ) made a nice GUI for the Megadetector camera trap detection platform that he talks about and provides links to (also on his Github).

-Carly

Look forward to playing with it when mine arrives I have  a sd card arduino module also not finding much documentation on how to hook it up so was going to play with a server and see what I can do with it and photos 

I have a raspberry pi3 setup now as a video streaming server so I can keep a eye on my home while I am at work 

Something I'm working on that might work well for you and is super affordable at about $30 per camera.

ESP32-cam (not super high quality photos though) with a motion sensor and it sends the photos to a PI Zero W that can be accesses at any time via wifi. I'm using the TPlink portable but have found that WemosD1 boards and upgrading the firmware to be able to do wifi repeaters works well.

Here's the camera I'm using:

https://starairvision.com/esp32-cam-motion-camera-with-date-and-time/

I'll make a post on here when the full project is built and I've tested the range. The repeaters use something called mesh networking. You can have a number of them in a row to get the camera out into the forest. Or if you have lign of sight you can use a signal booster and or a directional antenna.