Group

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

Analyze difference in time events in camera trap data

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 visits...

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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

Hi Adrián,

 

Bracis et al. {recurse} package in R allow those time between visits comparisons. I had problems running the package with my data, though. 

 

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discussion

Recommendations needed: software for collating camera trap images

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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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?

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 time at the conference, so I won't know many people...

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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

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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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

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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Have you considered Arduinos?

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

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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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.

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 with very extreme...

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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

 

 

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 

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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article

Ol Pejeta Conservancy and Mbaza AI

💙 Exciting news from Appsilon! Our flagship project, Mbaza AI, is expanding its impact on nature and biodiversity conservation. We’ve teamed up with the 🦏 Ol Pejeta Conservancy to build a model for classifying images of...

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discussion

Solar panel recs for camera traps

I have a small grant to support solar-izing part of our campus camera trap array and before finalizing purchases wanted to assess other's impressions of different solar pack...

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Hi Chris, we looked into solar powered battery systems for Reconyx because we had a customer want to use them along side our Solar BAR bioacoustic recorder. We made a power out port and custom cable to run his camera traps and also so someone else in France could use them with another company's bat detector. Typically they had a 10W solar panel, 8Ah lead acid battery and a charge controller built into a sealed box stuck to the back of the solar panel. You could save some weight by choosing a LiFePo4 battery instead like this but you can only use them when you know you will charge them when the temperature is over 0 degrees C or you will damage them. Use lead acid if you're not sure they will always be charged over 0 degrees C.

You can find MPPT solar charge modules on Aliexpress and Ebay. I used the search term "mppt solar charge module". LiFePo4 can be charged at the same voltage as lead acid and most lead acid chargers do constant current charging anyway becuse you can use it with lithium batteries then as well. It's better to get a LiFePo4 charger if you can get it to make sure it's constant current then constant voltage but they're pretty tough unless you charge them under 0 degrees.

A typical 10W 12v solar panel will have it's Maximum Power Point at 18v so your charge controller must be set to 18v as it's input voltage. The panel will make a maximum of 20v when it's not plugged into anything. A 10W panel will make about 0.5A so if you pick a 3A charger it'll get limited to 0.5A because of the panel.

A module like this where the parameters are adjustable might be good.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004728103789.html

On the other hand if you want something that can't be fiddled with after you made it get one with 18v MPPT voltage and set to charge a lead acid or whatever battery chemistry that you're using. Often using terms like lead acid when you search will help narrow it down. If you're going to use a 12v LiFePo4 note that's is a 3S 3.7v pack. That is 3 x 3.7v makes 11.1v (which they call a 12v pack).

If you're unsure feel free to email me at [email protected] to check what you're planning to buy.

If you're gluing a box with the charge controller onto the back of a solar panel use neutral cure silicone or check with the supplier about what glue you can use if you need something stronger than that.

If there is sufficient demand for these sorts of accessories please let me know and we can consider it as a product. 

Mark

Hey there! Not sure what your funding constraints are but I have been using Reolink Go PT, which is solar powered. This model has been discontinued. However they have an upgraded version. Adding link here. 



I have used this in the field in the swaps of Florida, exposed to heat, humidity and moisture. It has held up really well. Great sensors that can even be adjusted for sensitivity.

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discussion

Underwater Fish Datasets from the Mediterranean

Hi Wildlabs,I am Sebastian the project manager for FishID. We are currently in the last stretch of DevOps for the FishID platform. I am hoping this awesome network can help me on...

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Not sure if audio data would be of any use to you, but if so FishSounds has some - I just tried their search function and there is a location tag for 'Mediterranean & Black Sea'. 

You might try reaching out to the folks at Name that Fish, Innovasea, or perhaps an entity on the Fisheries Tech list would have Mediterranean stuff? 

Hi,

If this is still relevant, you can try reaching out to the Belmaker lab, they do BRUV surveys in the eastern Mediterranean and have hours of video, some of it I believe is annotated. Particularly, Shahar might be helpful, he's the PhD student running point on the project.

We have made available our underwater videos on YouTube as a playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnhVZKKy8WkZKriCIV6r7upWhHNVrU_7L 

It's about 1.113 short video clips with annotation and each is linked to the corresponding www.iNaturalist.org observations. The iNaturalist.org observations are research quality and have been uploaded to GBIF.org. The observations have been made between 2014 and 2022 around the Ionian Islands (Greece).

If you would need the original videos please contact me.

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discussion

Elephant Recognition

Hi,Could you help me understand more about the elephant recognition software? I have an Urgent Project which we can carry out.

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Hi Simon, 

i've popped you an email too, but actually sharing some more information here about what you're after will mean you'll be able to get better help from our full community. 

What are you looking for in particular? It sounds like there is particular piece of software you've seen that could be useful in your work - do you know what it's called? What do you need to do - image recognition, call recognition? Alerts when calls happen or are you looking for something more detailed? The more you tell us about what you're trying to do the better we'll be able to help!

Steph 

Hi Steph, 

This should be a simple project. Recently I came across a website with a sample video I am not sure whether it was from the wild Labs website. Where a camera is seen spotting a raccoon and giving an alert saying raccoon detected. My expectations are on similar lines, the only difference here is to change the raccoon to an elephant or a tiger. Please advice.

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discussion

camera with fast trigger- and recovery time?

Hello Camtrappers!Does anyone know a camera type, that is able to be triggered again immediately after the last trigger? I am talking about maybe one or two seconds, also three...

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@Stephanie as luck would have it, I recently released some firmware for Browning BTC-7E-HP5 and BTC-8E-HP5 cameras that contains a number of feature enhancements, including the oft-asked-for seconds-level resolution on the Date/Time in the image info strip.  See my recent blog posts on the topic, which incudes pointers for where to find the firmware images.  Links below  

Hi Robert, thanks a lot for sharing this! I guess, this won't work with Patriot? For my setting it is also very important, that animals do not detect or react to the camera, so I think the PAtriot is in this issue better than the Recon Force HP5. Also the battery life has to last for 3-4 month, that is why I prefer a camera with 8 batteries, like the Patirot over a camera with 6 batteries like the Dark OPS. The spec ops elite hp5 is obviously sold out on the browning website. 

@Stephanie well this just goes to show how good Browning market segmentation is :)   Yes -- it sounds like the "clickless" Patriot is a good choice for you.  I am in the process of adding support of these features in several more models.  I'll add Patriots to my list. 

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discussion

Need Assistance regarding selecting a camera

I'm working on an island bird species which is elusive and can only be found near their nest mounds—planning to deploy Timelapse cameras to monitor their breeding time behaviour...

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Hi @vishnuthavara so you need a camera that does both timelapse and is motion activated? Something like this maybe: 

Hi Vishnu,

Considering only motion detection video, it is possible to modify (most) camera traps to trigger an external piece of equipment like an audio recorder.  I'm not aware of any suitable off-the-shelf recorder, but I can build you one.  However many camera traps that will take video will also record audio, although the quality may not be suitable for all types of audio analysis.

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discussion

Deep Sea BRUVS Development

Hi everyone. Titus here from the Philippines.  We are currently working on creating a deep-sea dropcamera similar to Pau Anta's but modified for a BRUVS setup. We have most...

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Hi Titus,

If the usual syntactic foam sources aren't available, an option may be to add an empty dry housing or use a larger housing for the BRUV, just to provide the buoyancy.

You can make your own syntactic foam from glass microballoons and epoxy resin, but this will require experimentation and testing.  For sub-surface buoyancy, you could also use a jerry can full of cooking oil, or a coil of polypropylene rope.

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