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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

MegaDetector on Edge Devices ??

Hi all.  I'm a relatively new member of the community and have been trying to consume the many excellent videos, discussions and resources before asking questions. ...

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Has anyone tried running the MegaDetector model through an optimizer like Amazon SageMaker Neo? It can reduce the overall memory footprint and possibly speed up inference on devices like Raspberry Pi and Jetson.

Great work Luke @sheneman! Having a relatively lightweight bit of hardware to run MDv5 on will open up opportunities for many more people. The upfront financial cost of a Jetson Nano is an order of magnitude less than a computer with a beefy GPU. 

I haven't used any of the Nvidia edge devices yet. Do you think it would be possible for someone to make a disk image with MDv5 pre installed to lower the entry barrier of learning a new system, installing software, environments and packages etc.?

A difficulty I have seen for some projects is not having access to or not having internet bandwidth to utilize cloud compute services. If anyone needs to churn through camera trap image processing in a remote field station this may now be possible!

Great work, unfortunately, I'm not familiar with programming but computer friendly enough to follow a good tutorial. I was wondering if you will share your findings?

Thanks for the work.

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discussion

Multi-SD card reading hubs

Hi everyone,I'm writing to see if anyone has any experience with using/building hubs that can read multiple SD cards at once? I'm trying to explore ways to speed up the manual...

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Good point and nice link. My USB 3.0 (errr USB 3.1 Gen 1) portable HDD gets a real read speed of 133 MBps or ~1Gbps. The theoretical max is 5 Gbps but I think the speed is limited by processor used by the HDD/USB bridge controller. Most SD card readers may be more limited even if the SD card can handle higher data rates. That may be why it could be best to just use the multi-port device from SanDisk. 

Jamie,

I have been using a 12-card Lexar Professional Workflow system for several years to process images from 24 trail cameras.  The system has 4 bays, with 3 card readers per bay.  I wrote software to automatically download and rename the images using metadata read from the info banner burned into the images by the camera.  (Alternatively, the software can use the Exif metadata attached to the image.)  The software is described in a recent Wildlife Society Bulletin: 

The software is available on github:  

Don't be put off by "time-lapse recordings" - it works on still images also.

Regards,

Mike Hilton

Have a look at @tessa_rhinehart 's TechTutors on scaling up acoustic surveys. This is addressed at 11 min: 

The "hexadecapus" is the hardware, but transfer is automated by naming the SDCards prior to use and scripts take care of the transfer. The scripts may be written up in the audiomoth guide but the kitzes lab have this on github (although it may be mac specific) 

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discussion

Most interesting images / sightings 'caught on camera'

A thread for people to upload the most interesting or unusual sightings recorded by their traps. To get the ball rolling here's a coy looking crow..

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No - the trap was in their path and they just walked through it. I've now moved it to a place they can't go. The biggest threat to the moths is from pied currawongs. I schedule the trap so it shuts off at least two before sunrise to try to avoid them feasting on the larger insects.

At first I was finding wings below the screen in the morning when I put our units out. So I put a game camera on the units to see what was feeding and when. I found three bird species, likely 3 individuals, quickly found it to be a good bird feeder- Song Sparrow (most frequent), House Wren, and this Tufted Titmouse. I changed my units to turn off about 1.5 hours before dawn and that worked! Nearly all the moths left the scene before the birds came to visit. 

My most prized camera trap image - a hummingbird caught on camera!

Image

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discussion

Camera trapping in the tropics

Hi everyone! New camera trapper over here! I have some questions specific to camera trapping medium-large mammals in the tropics, especially rural areas of Central America (...

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Maybe a couple useful refs.

- we did find smaller detection areas in the wet season here

- guidelines for sample design here.

I've never had a problem with monkeys wrecking cameras, hyenas, elephants, bears yes.

cheers

Roland

Hi @laydent ,

I am just an occasional and non-professional user of a camera trap in Costa Rica. I have not experienced destruction of the camera trap by animals, so far. The trap never caught a monkey, but it did catch raccoons, an ocelot, pizotes and olingos. They all left the camera trap alone.

Rain would impact animal behavior obviously and possibly result in false positive triggering of the camera due to moving leaves and/or the rain itself. On the latter, one might try different sensitivity settings to see how your particular camera responds.

Camera traps are supposedly water tight ( and mine has been ), but in the long run seals may erode ( direct exposure to the sun may speed that up ). Also, I am wondering if water tight means rain-water tight, leaving the possibility of air humidity coming into the trap and cause corrosion.

Sorry, but I can not recommend anything to your third point.

I would agree that primates probably aren't your biggest concern, animal-destroyer wise. At least in the Malagasy rainforests, lemurs are highly arboreal so if you have trail cams down low, the lemurs won't come down that far. Neotropical primates are probably similar in that respect (at least compared to African/Asian primates such as baboons & macaques which are more terrestrial). The bigger issue than animals messing up cameras has been people stealing or interfering with them, so trying to put hem off-trail/hidden, locked onto large trees has been important. 

I second the Kays et al paper that @Rolandisimo mentioned above as a great reference & starting point! There is also this paper on camera trap study design, this one on camera trap placement bias and this one on strategic camera trap placement for evaluating different metrics. 

In terms of wet vs dry season, you'll want to make sure that water doesn't accumulate where you're putting up the cameras such that they would potentially become submerged in a flash flood or river-rising/overflowing situation, but you probably already know that :).  

There have been many papers that have looked at the effect of seasonality with camera trap data, but the majority of them are with regard to the actual species activity pattern differences across seasons rather than the effect of season on detection distance. You should consider what your species of interest's activity patterns are in different seasons and how this may impact detection probability. It may also be important in terms of strategically planning your sampling scheme. For example, the mouse & dwarf lemurs in Madagascar hibernate during the cold/dry season so it's not useful to sample for them during those months.   

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discussion

Conservation Tech Directory - new update!

New directory update from @gracieermi & I! And an extra special one as we've just passed our 1-year anniversary! Super exciting to see how far this has come! Check it out:...

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Congrats on the milestone Carly and Gracie!

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discussion

ISO Alternatives Wanted: Reconyx HF2X HyperFire 2

Hi everyone, do you know of any cameras that are similar to the Reconyx HF2X HyperFire 2, but that might be a bit less expensive? https://www.reconyx.com/product/hyperfire-2-...

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Yes, contact me, please!

Hello!

I am Daniele and I work with camera trapping research in the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development (Amazonas state, Brazil).
We have used with Reconyx HyperFire since the beggining of our monitoring, but now we have a budget to buy new cameras and we are considering to purchase another models. I was looking for some information and saw your answer to this post. Could you please tell me that information on any "cameras that are similar to the Reconyx HyperFire, but that might be a bit less expensive"?
We are considering the Browning Patriot model.

Thank you,

Daniele
 

 

There is this other WILDLABS discussion thread where tons of people provided input on their experiences with lots of different brands & models which may help. 

You might also want to check out the Conservation Tech Directory and search 'camera trap' for a list of suppliers/companies & the price range of their products. 

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discussion

Avian nest box monitoring 

Hi. I’m hoping there’s a guru out there who can advise on tech for monitoring conditions inside avian nest boxes? Links to data loggers and endoscopes they’ve used successfully...

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Maybe this is a starting point. Any idea if this product would work inside the box. Kestrel DROP D3 Wireless Temperature, Humidity & Pressure Data Logger https://amzn.eu/d/5VdQwtA  

I'd be interested in any camera monitoring setups that can be used inside a nest box. Most camera traps are too bulky for this purpose. All the devices I've looked at either need a wired connection or a wifi network to transmit images. I want one that can store all info to an SD card and preferably be solar powered. Obviously infrared or starlight sensitivity. Sound recording would be a bonus for some bird monitoring I want to do.

Done lots of this over the years and it depends on the species really. If you want incubation behaviour  and hence success or otherwise using temperature then the Thermocron IButton DS1921G is perfect. The new Blue Maestro is an option I became aware of this year but I haven't tested at scale.

In terms of cameras and endoscopes I've tailored many off the shelf products and built a few from scratch. When I get chance I'll have a look around and see what is still available.

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event

CamTrap Ecology meets AI conference

The first international workshop on camera traps & AI analysis for wildlife monitoring, including associated ecological & data collection methods. It runs as three live online sessions of expert talks, tutorials...

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discussion

River Otter Camera Traps

Hello! My name Is Britnee Cheney. I have started a new River Otter conservation program at the Aquarium I work at, and I'm having a hard time getting good clear videos of the...

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I am a Camera Trapper hobbyist. I have gotten some nice otter videos. You can see them on my you tube channel pheekin trail camera videos. There is nothing on the channel but 15 second videos of animals that I have filmed. I have several otter videos on the channel that I think are pretty good. I found a spot where beaver, mink, and otters were moving between a medium size river and a man made wetland. I set my cameras on the trails. The secret was getting the camera really low on the trees near the trails. If you look at the otter videos the camera is pointed toward the river, just offset of the trail. When placed at 90 degrees to the trail the otters moved too fast for a good video. When offset but looking toward the river, the otters see the camera but most animals still proceeded down the trail toward the wetland. It helped that the river bank was steep and when they got to the top they triggered the camera at the same time they saw the camera. The camera was a true dark flash so they see the camera has and object but do not see the flash. One warning when cameras are set low on a tree the camera really has to be locked in tight. Raccoon and coyote will investigate the camera and some will knock it.  Coyotes knocked out  of position three of the 4 cameras that I set. Thankfully I got the otters before they knocked the cameras. Hope this helps 

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careers

Conservation Technology Research Internship

Boost cons tech capacity at an international NGO! Fauna & Flora International is offering a paid three-month internship to consolidate and share best practices for the application of emerging hardware and software...

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discussion

Download files through wifi/BT ?

Is there any camera or accessory that would let me download the SD files through wifi or bluetooth, thus not having to remove the camera to extract the SD? . Still, thereI...

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careers

Lead Software Engineer, Wildlife Insights

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...

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discussion

Dealing with Cows whilst camera trapping

Morning everyone.I am having a big issue with cows knocking over camera traps and was hoping the wider group might be able to throw up some solutions. The project I am...

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Hi David,

 

Harold is correct. Cattle do like to use anything to scratch against. They are also pretty inquisitive.  

Cattle don't like shadows or flowing rubbish/ material. So attach a flag post near the camera or build a cage around it. Yet with a cage, cattle will most likely rub up against it. 

Never ending cycle of the scratching vs what you don't want moved

 

I like the idea of supplying them with a scratching post solution, I will look into that. Thorns/gorse is also a great idea. 

Thanks very much for the suggestions! I will let you know what works!

 

Hi Kim,

Thanks for the response. I think they can hear our cameras clicking when they are set off and they come to see what is happening so I would totally agree with the inquisitive cows!

I will try the flag idea as building cages is just not going to be practical with soil depth.

 

Thanks for the suggestion! 

 

Cheers

Dave 

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discussion

Can deep learning identify seabirds? (species, within-species, individual)

Hello everyone,I am looking for insight on the feasibility of identifying seabirds from photos taken at sea (such as these https://www.flickr.com/photos/9191812@...

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Update: I asked the same question on twitter so I'm sharing answers I got there:

https://twitter.com/YvanSatge/status/1529841782191792130?s=20&t=kbPCEOeZpuRM8MHT4No-ZQ

Hi Yvan, 

I dropped this into the AI for Conservation slack group as well, you got this reply this morning: 

Steph 

Hi Yvan,

If you find something which reaches your expectation and especially the ability to identify individual with plumage patterns I will be intereted.

In the same idea that Ultralytics, there is : 

Which could probably answer your first and second requirements.

 

And find here a great website showing all the IA-based camera software, you may find solutions or contact throw this list:

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discussion

Hardware Advice Needed: Cameras for seabird' nests

Hi everyone, I am part of a project about seabird conservation in Cape Verde Islands. We need to monitor tropicbird, Cap Verde petrel and other seabird’ nests, in order...

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discussion

Identify animal from Image

I am thankful to the members of Wildlabs net for giving us the right information to enable us to plan Bioacoustics solution implementation. It seems to be on track as of now....

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Hi Jitendra.

If they are still images, many people are using Megadetector to analyze their images. I'm not sure how it will do in species classification, but it can tell you if there are images of interest in the shots. Others here can probably give you more detailed instructions on how to use it to batch process camera trap images.

 

Have you considered creating a Kaggle competition? If you already have lots of images, and some that have been labelled, then this could be a good way to get people working on a solution

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