Hi Erika, 

Suggestions coming in over on Twitter: 

In socks in a cupboard.

— Lisette Mill - Agvocate (@agvocate_au) June 8, 2022

I store my Cameras in one gallon plastic bags with a zipper lock. Most cameras will fit in that size bag. There is a note card that goes in the bag, The note card lasts longer in the bag and does not smear which it will if you write on the outside and is very important if you are running a lot of cameras. You can make a nice note card with a word processor and lay out everything you want to note. The Notes can be whatever you want to track but the most useful is the brand and model, the date the camera was purchased, The Date it went into the storage bag, Notes on if the camera has been updated. The camera number, the password if the camera needs a password, The person who put the camera in the bag with their full name and the date, A note on how the camera did on it's last deployment, Camera works fine, YES, or whatever might be wrong is listed. I would also list any special features that the camera can perform, such has WIFI enable, Cell Camera, etc. I also make sure the Cameras number is easy to see on the card. When the cameras go out they should have a camera number on the inside of the camera so you can track it in your field notes and make sure all the bags come back from deployment so they are ready for when the cameras come back in from the field. 

The batteries are removed from the camera, When I bring a camera in from the field I test each battery with a  battery tester. If all the batteries are still good that information is noted on the bag card that the batteries were tested and their strength. Keeping the batteries with the camera keeps you from mixing batteries of various strengths. Remove any bad batteries and note if a new one has been added. If you decide to replace all the batteries, Note on the card that they are NEW and their strength because all new batteries should be tested to make sure you did not get a bad one. If batteries are not available put that on the Note card, NOTE, removing the batteries will usually require all the settings to be redone, I still put on the note card, CAMERA NEEDS NEW SETTINGS. 

I also put in the SD Cards, with SD size on the Camera Card. Some of my older cameras only take a 32 gig or smaller, while my new cameras take 125 Gig SD cards. If putting out a camera for a very long run I want to grab one that can take a large SD card. I usually have two SD cards for each camera so they can be swapped out but keep the same cards. Put on the Camera Card that the SD card should reformatted before the next deployment or you can reformat the SD card before the batteries are removed, but NOTE on the camera card that the SD cards are formatted and ready to go. This is a good idea so you know before storage that the SD cards work. 

Last I add one packet of Silica Dry packs. The bags are 5 grams. I use DRY and DRY. I got them in a 50 packet bag from Amazon, about 8 bucks. They are cheap and do a great job of removing all the moisture from the Camera, batteries, SD card, and keeps them dry for even very very long storage. 

Hope this helps, when the camera number goes up the more you need to keep them organized. 

I forgot to add, I put the cameras in the bag with the doors or camera halves OPEN so the moisture does not stay in a closed camera, we want everything to stay dry. 

Couple other papers looking at predator-prey interactions with camera trap data & multi-species occupancy models (though you may/probably know about some of them already!) -

Van der Weyde, L. K., Mbisana, C., & Klein, R. (2018). Multi-species occupancy modelling of a carnivore guild in wildlife management areas in the Kalahari. Biological Conservation, 220, 21-28. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320717316464. 

Murphy, A., Kelly, M. J., Karpanty, S. M., Andrianjakarivelo, V., & Farris, Z. J. (2019). Using camera traps to investigate spatial co‐occurrence between exotic predators and native prey species: a case study from northeastern Madagascar. Journal of Zoology, 307(4), 264-273. https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jzo.12645. 

Kleiven, E. F., Barraquand, F., Gimenez, O., Henden, J. A., Ims, R. A., Soininen, E. M., & Yoccoz, N. G. (2021). A dynamic occupancy model for interacting species with two spatial scales. bioRxiv, 2020-12. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.16.423067v2.abstract. 

@TomRS  @greghall and @htarold my initial (and brief) tests with the microwave sensor (same as this one: https://wiki.dfrobot.com/MicroWave_Sensor_SKU__SEN0192) I have suggest it's really sensitive to movement at fairly close range (~2m or less). Whilst this is impressive (like, it can detect my finger moving a few mm @ ~1-2m), it suggests that in order to avoid a lot of false positives/blank images, a fairly high tolerance or threshold would have to be set in the code. This will take a bit of trial and error to get right I reckon. Even though it has an in-buit potentiometer to toggle 'sensitivity' (equates to distance), even at the lowest setting, which is what I have it at, it's still really sensitive out at several metres. It definitely does appear to have an ability to tell the difference between a 'one off' or superficial movement, and more consistent movement that might be expected when an animal moves through an area. Maybe a combo PIR (interrupt) and microwave sensor (double checks after wakeup) could be a goer...although that could be a bit slow...Anyway, thought I'd share...

Thanks @PaulG and @TomRS I've now ordered some of the same model units, so shall hopefully get to test em out soon!

Cheers,

Rob

I've purchased my magnets here and the ferrous mounting stripes here. I've used UV cure superglue for attaching the magnets, as standard superglue sometmes failed after longperiod of being wet.

Just be aware of the limitations; you'll be transmitting at a very slow baud rate on frequencies that may have strict duty cycle (transmission time) and ERP (transmission power) limits. Check up on the rules for the region in which you intend to operate and make sure that the restrictions fit in with your intended application.

The following two papers describe our attempst to develop an open source RPi camera trap platform with long range communications capability, and may be of interest:

Nazir, S., Fairhurst, G., Verdicchio, F., 2017. WiSE - a satellite-based system for remote monitoring. Int. J. Satell. Commun. Netw. 35, 201–214. https://doi.org/10.1002/sat.1176

Nazir, S., Newey, S., Irvine, R.J., Verdicchio, F., Davidson, P., Fairhurst, G., Wal, R. van der, 2017. WiseEye: Next Generation Expandable and Programmable Camera Trap Platform for Wildlife Research. PLoS One 12, e0169758. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0169758

More details can be found here: https://erg.abdn.ac.uk/wise/

/Scott

Vasudev

I have had no issues using ubiquiti device and pushing internet out to 5 miles line of site, what I am curious what are you using for you camera on the other end, I have always wanted to try and build a long distance wifi trail camera ( true wifi ).

is it solar powered or battery powered that has been my issue trying to figure out the power issue 

Hi Capreolus, hi all,

As this thread seems to have come alive again, I thought it might finally be time to share some of the progress that's been made on a LoRa connected camera trap system developed by the Zoological Society of London called Instant Detect 2.0. There are already some blogs on this site about Instant Detect 2.0 so I’ll just focus on the LoRa camera here.

Sending images using an off-the-shelf LoRa module and protocol isn’t possible, so we had to develop our own protocol (MAC and Application layers) from scratch using the LoRa physical layer.

We designed this protocol to meet with EU radio emissions standards and usage restrictions (duty cycles) so that the system can be CE certified, and we have also designed protocol variants for many other countries  based on their radio regulations. Our goal is to have variants developed that allow the system to be used legally in every country.

The Instant Detect 2.0 LoRa cameras have now been undergoing testing and optimisation for almost 3 years. The key requirements we have designed for and now have working are:

1. 100% reliable transmission (no images are lost in the ether),

2. maximise range (regardless of terrain and vegetation),

3. maximise speed (this reduces power consumption and on-air time),

4. multiple cameras sending images at once (deconfliction management and queuing),

5. minimise power usage so the whole network can run off batteries (including the base station),

6. easy to set-up by non-technical users (it just works).

The Instant Detect 2.0 system is now undergoing field trials to prove its capabilities and find its limits and if all goes to plan we hope to have it available sometime next year.

Hi Sam,
I´ve been waiting for your Instant Detect 2.0 .
So great to hear about your progress. Please keep us updated!

Greetings from Austria,
Robin

Hi Sam,

Impressive!  Any chance the LoRa code is open source?  I should like to take a gander.

Thanks

Hey Ellie--

Glad to see you getting started with this. 

I'll speak to the data-storage question, it might be worth it for you to do something like paying for extra google drive space rather than go through the external hard drive process. That way you're ensuring you don't have to worry about losing your drive or just leaving it at home. It's $30 US for 200GB of space for a year, which is quite reasonable, especially for a single recorder / camera trap. 

I'd also make sure you have an SD card reader, and maybe a sealed card holder/wallet to keep data safe while it transitions from the field. How much to budget for batteries will depend on exactly what sensors you end up purchasing but in my experience, ordering high-end alkaline batteries is the best bet (for example, in the Duracell line, their Procell D batteries really do perform better than the normal consumer level coppertop batteries). I'd recommend playing around with the scheduler software for whatever acoustic sensor you end up obtaining to figure out whether you'll be limited by power or storage depending on how you set things up.

Oh very cool Robin. Do you mind if I ask how much it is for the unit?

Thank Capreolus,

for your feedback, did you try it where the cellular network is weak? 

Thank you.