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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. 

event

Perspectives from the World Ranger Congress

John Probert

10 August 2016 12:00am

The 8th annual World Ranger Congress was held in Colorado, USA from May 21-27th 2016. John H. Probert attended the conference as a representative of WILDLABS.NET. In this report he shares his experiences at the congress...

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discussion

Resource: Wildlife Speed Cameras: Measuring animal travel speed and day range using camera traps

Stephanie O'Donnell

28 April 2016 2:39pm

Travel speed and day range are metrics usually derived from telemetry or direct observations. A new (open access) paper in Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation,...

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mmerrifield Merrifield

13 June 2016 4:59pm

Here's a set of tools that could be applicable to this idea

 https://github.com/pfr/VideoSpeedTracker

Ollie Wearn

7 August 2016 11:15pm

Hi Steph - just to follow up on your post: @MarcusRowcliffe , James Durrant and I have been working on a bit of software to implement the "computer vision" techniques that are mentioned in that paragraph. You can see a demonstration of it in action here. It requires camera-trappers to "calibrate" their camera traps during setup (or take-down), by taking pictures of a standard object (for example, we use a 1m pole held vertically) at different distances. The calibration takes ~10 mins per location. From this, you can reconstruct the paths that animals take infront of cameras, the total distance they travelled, and therefore their speed.

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discussion

[ARCHIVED EVENT]: Approaches to Analysing Camera Trap Data

Stephanie O'Donnell

18 April 2016 3:45pm

On Friday 22nd April, the David Attenborough Building Stats Club will be meeting to discuss approaches to analysing camera trap data. This is a broad field, and camera traps...

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lshirley_highdesertmuseum_org

5 August 2016 9:54pm

Hi Steph,

Only just discovered this site, so I'm a bit late to the game.

I'd love to hear what your main take-aways were from this meeting!

Best,

Louise

Stephanie O'Donnell

5 August 2016 10:35pm

Hi Louise, 

Welcome! Unfortunately, an uncomfortably busy calendar meant I ended up missing this gathering. However, I'm sure that @SteffenOppel @Tomswinfield  or @ali+johnston (I think you were all involved?) might be kind enough to jump in here and share some of their key take aways from this discussion?   

Steph 

 

 

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article

Camera traps reveal mysteries of nature

Roland Kays

18 July 2016 12:00am

Sharing personal 'best of' animal pictures is a favorite pastime of many camera trappers. A prolific camera trapper himself, Roland Kays has pulled together more than 600 images collected by 152 researchers from 54...

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discussion

Discussion: Self-powered camera trap

Dave Cortright

24 November 2015 7:36pm

Back in April I read about this project out of Columbia University for a self-powered camera that uses the light hitting the sensor to power the camera. It's a cool idea, and...

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Dave Cortright

1 December 2015 6:27pm

I was initially thinking of dozens or maybe even hundreds of nodes coming back to a central wired connection point. I wonder if something like Google's project Loon could work in place of an on-the-ground network.

But stepping back from the tech for a moment, really the problem we're trying to solve here is being able to have remote monitoring cameras that don't need anyone to go out to change batteries or memory cards. After salaries, vehicles/transportation is the top expense at pretty much all of the conservation partners we have. Anything we can do to reduce the travel (and the time of the people as well) is huge.

Pawel Moll

1 December 2015 6:37pm

So, in terms of power, does the "classic" solution with a set of solar panel cells on top of the box have some major flaws? I'm pretty sure I've seen self-powered meteo stations looking like this positioned along motorways/higways (don't remember what country or even a continent was it :-) Not being an expert in photo-voltaics, I would risk saying that a purposely-designed cell pointing up, directly at the sun, will have better efficiency than a re-purposed CMOS censor :-)

And indeed, talking to something overhead (either the baloons or Facebook's drones - forgot the name - or maybe even satellites?) would be probably much simpler than ground-based communication. If we had big enough energy budget, the communication channel would be "relatively easy" to implement...

Peter Apps

4 July 2016 11:51am

Some camera trap manufacturers offer solar power as an add-on or option off the shelf. I agree that using the image seems like a solution looking for a problem.

 

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event

Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge Accelerator Bootcamp

Sophie Maxwell

24 June 2016 12:00am

Earlier this month, the 16 prize winners of the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge were called to Washington D.C. for an Accelerator Boot Camp. Sophie Maxwell, a member of the prize winning team from the Zoological Society...

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discussion

Project Feedback Wanted: Building Low Cost Cameras

Adam Bloch

2 March 2016 9:59am

We have been facing some problems for Cameras either for monitoring nests or for quick deployment for medical or behavioral reasons. We need them to be low cost and easy to use...

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Paolo Taranto

11 May 2016 6:27pm

thanks for this very interesting post! i was also trying to develop an inexpensive camera trap but with not good results. i think the use of a PIR sensor can give more battery life than motion detection via software. Can you give more details about the components you used please?

Thanks
Paolo

Adam Bloch

20 May 2016 11:07pm

Hi Sorry been away, I'll list more about parts etc.. In the mean time the Pi Zero has just had an upgrade..

 

http://petapixel.com/2016/05/19/5-raspberry-pi-zero-now-camera-compatible/

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article

TEAM Network and Wildlife Insights

Eric Fegraus

28 April 2016 12:00am

Operating the largest tropical forest camera trap network globally, TEAM Network has accumulated over 2.6 million images. How can large datasets coupled with new techniques for data management and analysis provide...

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