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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. 

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Tech4Wildlife Leaders: Resolving Human-Giraffe Conflict

Owino Raymond
Read our interview with early career conservationist and CLP Future Conservationist Award recipient Owino Raymond, who is working with camera traps along the Kenya-Somalia border to understand and reduce conflict...

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discussion

Camera traps in the tropics: no detection of wildlife visits

Hello everyone, I'm Patrícia and I'm currently working as a reseach assistant in Príncipe island. One of my tasks here is to use artificial nests to...

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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...

 

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discussion

Recommendations needed: Rechargeable batteries for camera traps

We are exploring rechargeable battery options, particularly for Cuddeback XChange Color (C1) models. These cameras use 8x AA batteries, and ideally need a charge of 1.5V...

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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.

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article

New Article: Environmental DNA Metabarcoding

WILDLABS Team
Check out the new research article "Environmental DNA metabarcoding as a useful tool for evaluating terrestrial mammal diversity in tropical forests." Recently published in Ecological Society of America's Ecological...

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discussion

I made an open-source tool to help you sort camera trap images

Hi all. For the past couple of months I have been volunteering with the New Zealand Department of Conservation. They needed a tool that speeds up the process of weeding out empty...

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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 

Right now the only classifications are animal/vehicle/person/empty. It cannot discern between different species.

There is no support for training at the moment -- I am envisioning something down the line but I wouldn't say that's coming any time soon.

Hope that helps!

Hi

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

Thanks for your work!

Juan

 

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discussion

Wide angle camera trap

I am looking for a camera trap model with a wide(r) angle lense than the conventional ones offer. The model needs to be able to function properly in a tropical forest environment...

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Important considerations raised by Peter!

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

 

I agree the PIR sensor and the camera will be "seeing" different pictures, but I believe that is exactly the effect that is sought: now too much of the elephant is out of the frame when the camera is triggered, and the wide angle lens is desired so that more of the elephant would fit in the frame at that same triggering point.

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?

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discussion

Camera Trapping Software

Hi everyone, We're dealing with huge amounts of Camera Trapping data in different contexts. Probably as most people, we've been using spreadsheets to annotate the image...

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Hi @carlybatist, thanks for the encouragement! Madagascar feels pretty Southern African to us (it's a member of SADC after all and plus lemurs are cool), so perhaps it will be the next "different" set of species that we add, or our second model. We just wanted to start off biting off a smaller chunk and get it delivered and working well, instead of spreading ourselves too thin and never getting good at or delivering anything. So sure, maybe in about 6 months or so if you have training images we can use?

We use a COCO-dataset-trained base model and then add our own curated training dataset sourced from user's images (with permission) or public datasets, but not any Wildlife Insights data.

Yes, it can do birds flying through, see below. Right now we have only focussed on bigger birds (ostrich, secretary bird, bustards, guinea fowl, vulture, that kind of thing), many of which are found mostly on the ground anyway, but otherwise they get lumped together as "Bird (Other)" until we get enough of each to train a specific species. Also apparently flying porcupine! (oops).

And don't worry about all the questions, we're just as excited to answer them!

That's awesome! And yes it's definitely in Southern Africa geographically, but the biomes and species are so different that I imagine it wouldn't necessarily be easy to generalize your models and training data to Mada sites. Does Wildlife Insights use any of the same training data you do? Just seems like there could be options for not re-inventing the wheel since yoursand their's initiatives/goals are similar. Also, is this all terrestrially deployed images? Or do you have training data from arboreal camera traps as well? 

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

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article

Kaggle Competition: iWildcam 2021 - FGVC8

CVPR
This year's iWildCam competition is now live on kaggle. Go beyond just classifying species or detecting animals - this year the challenge focuses on counting how many individuals of each species are seen in a burst of...

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funding

Funding Opportunity: COVID-19 Science Fund

National Geographic
National Geographic is offering funding up to up to $50,000 for conservationists conducting research on how the pandemic has impacted wildlife and conservation work.  If you are interested in researching aspects of the...

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article

Resource: WildID

WildID
WildID is excited to share their new camera trap processing and detection tools with WILDLABS! Using machine learning to identify Southern African wildlife species in large quantities of camera trap data, WildID's tool...

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article

Seeing #Tech4Wildlife With Unseen Empire

Internet of Elephants
Based on one of the largest camera trap surveys ever attemped, Internet of Elephants' new mobile game Unseen Empire draws on the real field experiences and camera trap data sets of a single decade-long survey, giving...

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article

Collaboration Spotlight: BoomBox

Ellie Warren
Today we're celebrating the #Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge by shining a spotlight on one of our favorite WILDLABS collaboration success stories: the BoomBox! This collaboration between Dr. Meredith Palmer, Jacinta ...

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discussion

Wireless Camera for Live Viewing

Hi Everyone, Just thought I'd share a project I'm working on for a cheap remote camera system. The range is short but it connects to a cell phone without needing to...

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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 

Nice! I'm building an esp32-cam with a Pi Zero server and I have the photos sending to it now. The last step is to build a housing for it and get it outside to capture some photos of the bears coming out of hibernation. Should be fun! I'm hoping to download photos from the camera over 1km away from my house, while sipping tea haha.

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 

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discussion

Open Source Camera Trap

Hi all new to your site so far a lot of good info from what I see. I have multiple trail cameras some cellular some standard but what I would like to build is a long range WiFi...

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Akiba I have used ubiquiti loco m5 to broadcast internet with great success when I was setting up internet for a park for a 10k run I was able to get atleast a mile with no issues with internet 

not discorcuaged just looking  to piggy back off of a local wifi and be able to connect to a diy camera trap and be able to either do live video feed or capture a pic and then with a program I create send it to email or txt message 

the place I am looking at I can get almost a mile in distance but the problem is the power it would have to be some kind of solar power don't want to have to change batteries ever other day 

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.

Thanks Ryan would like to hear more about this, the project look awesome what distance are you getting from your wifi router 

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discussion

Tech Tutors: How do I start a Tech4Wildlife collaboration?

Hi Wildlabbers, Ed Miller and Melanie Clapham tackled the question, "How do I start a Tech4Wildlife collaboration? Lessons learned from developing facial...

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One barrier that was discussed in the presentation was the "risk" or uncertainty of a payoff when talking to potential funders. It seems to me that the "risk" factor of collaborations like this, for funders, would be analogous to the investment and payoff when developing a genomics program. Relative to traditional field research, it takes a much greater investment in time, with different expertise, to create a reference genome for a species of interest and then pull SNPs, etc. Nevertheless, funders seem to recognize the potential for genomic research and genomic tools. Do you think that greater openness to “risk” in conservation genomics results from closer intellectual proximity (i.e., molecular biology vs organismal biology), or to conservation genomics being a more mature field (i.e., more examples of success), or to other factors? If intellectual proximity is a key factor, then conservation tech collaborations will continue to face this barrier, but if lack of successful examples are a key factor, then perhaps this barrier will become less of an issue for conservation tech in the future. Thoughts?

Hi. Just watched the Youtube version (I'm in the unable to watch live hemisphere) and wanted to say that was a great talk. I wish it could have gone for another hour. I liked hearing about the issues and concerns from Melanie on the biology/ecology side. Also could totally relate to what Ed was talking about from the tech side about how it's difficult to have long term collaborations since there isn't really a conservation technology career path at the moment. 
I think one of the things we're trying to do with courses like Build Your Own Datalogger is to get people involved in wildlife/conservation side more comfortable with the tech. The goal is to hopefully build a shared repository of technical knowledge that people in the wildlife community can contribute to and benefit from. 

Akiba

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article

Protecting Wildlife with Machine Learning

Hack the Poacher
Last year, Tim van Deursen and Thijs Suijten shared their new "Hack the Poacher" system with us, presenting a unique way to detect poachers in real-time within protected national parks. Read on to learn about their next...

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event

Making the Most of Tech Tutors Season 2!

WILDLABS Team
WILDLABS is celebrating its five year anniversary! Throughout the rest of 2020, we'll be sharing articles, community features, and case studies showcasing the incredible projects, collaborations, and successes that this...

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discussion

Tech Tutors: How do I repair my camera traps?

Hi Wildlabbers,  It's almost time for our fifth Tech Tutors session tomorrow with Laure Joanny, Rob Appleby, and Alistair Stewart, who will...

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Hi all,

I know we mentioned this in the episode and collaborative doc for this episode, but I just wanted to make sure everyone knows about the camera trap troubleshooting spreadsheet our presenters created! The goal is to build up a bank of common problems so we can help each other and have an ongoing resource to use.

Please consider adding your problems into the spreadsheet as well as here in the forum!

-Ellie

Hi all,

This camera trap repair video about sulfated batteries was shared with us on Twitter and I thought it might be interesting and helpful for this Tech Tutors group! Check it out here and let us know if you find this useful!

-Ellie 

 

Hi all, 

Just saw this on Twitter - a database of all kinds of camera trap user manuals across brands and models. Thought it might be a helpful resource if you're struggling with an old or used camera that you don't have the manual for.

------

 

Did you buy your #cameratrap years ago and you have lost the user manual?

that's my case, but I've the solution!

find here thousand of #cameratrap user manual. Different brands, models...https://t.co/c9FchfINzR

— cameratraps (@cameratraps1) November 3, 2020
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discussion

Camera trap repairs

Hi all, thank you for the fascinating camera trap workshop, I found it super helpful in my battle against camera trap repairs. I am currently at a research station in the...

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Apologies for the super late reply and thank you for all your comments and help. WE had wifi problems at the research station. I managed to fix a few by removing the rust from connectors, leaving them in a sealed container with silica gel. I am not back at home so will look at the different documents and order some equipment before I go back out to be ready for more repairing. Is there a list of other suggested items I should invest in to help with repairs? 

That is great to hear, Mark. I'm interested as to which repair related to each of the symptoms you intially listed, but for now, knowing that more of your cameras work is excellent. I think your use of silica gel to properly dry out the cameras is underrated - this might have to top suggestion for malfunctioning cameras in the future.

A list of basic tools is a good idea. Maybe we should start a separate thread for this, but I'll throw a few in here to start.

Screwdriver set  - small electronics screwdrivers, Phillips and flat head. Some cameras are using "torx" heads, so check your equipment and what you may need.

Multimeter - most problems can be checked using a volt meter only, but checking resistance of leads and continuity is very useful.

Pliers and snips - small needle nosed pliers are great for hard to reach pieces, side cutters help a lot for accurately trimming wires. If you start rewiring and soldering then wire strippers are very useful, but the job can be done carefully with a sharp knife if needed.

Soldering iron, solder and flux - if parts are coming loose, cables are getting torn off by animals or you just need to secure old wires better, then soldering is usually needed. A cheap soldering iron will do the job on wires for batteries and general hookup, but fine temperature control and a small tip is better for circuitboards. Do you have mains power - 240V/110V? A battery powered or 12V iron might be needed for a remote field/station. Fine electronics solder is most useful. Flux help clean surfaces for soldering but should be rinsed off to avoid corrosion - I have a "flux pen" that is small, portable. Practice is the key to soldering. There are lots of tutorials online about soldering but give it a go on something sacrificial first to get a feel for temperatures and how molten solder works.

Spare wire - size the wire accoring to the amperage that is needed. Passing too many amps through a fine wire may cause a fire (trust me). Multiple colours are avaialble so you can colour code your +/- and data lines. 

Insulation - this should be higher up the list! Electrical tape wrapped around wires and terminals will get the job done, but heat shrink tube in various sizes is more robust (just remember to put it over the wire before you connect it). Kapton tape is good for covering flat, internal electronics like circuitboards.

I hope that helps. Any other suggestions?

Cheers, Al

I also just found this similar summary of equipment on youtube - https://youtu.be/pNBkfE8UPDI. The breadboard and components are a good addition for building and testing circuits.

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event

Snapshot USA Symposium for Student Research

Roland Kays
Are you a student using Snapshot USA data in research and class projects? Present your work (and Mammal Memes) at the Snapshot USA Student Research Symposium! Taking place on November 13th from 1-3 PM EST, this is your...

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discussion

Tech Tutors: How do I train my first machine learning model?

Hi wildlabbers,  We're just a few hours away from our first Tech Tutors session with Daniel Situnayake, who will be tackling the question: How do I...

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Hi Wildlabbers,

Just popping in to share this very cool primer for beginners to embedded machine learning from our tutor Daniel Situnayake! If you're interested in learning more about the basics of TinyML, this is a great resource.

Find the link here!

-Ellie

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event

Training Opportunity: HarvardX TinyML Course

edX
Want to build your professional skills in TinyML? Harvard University and Google TensorFlow are offering a new online Professional Certificate program of 3 skill-building courses, designed to cover the essential "...

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