Autonomous camera traps for insects provide a tool for long-term remote monitoring of insects. These systems bring together cameras, computer vision, and autonomous infrastructure such as solar panels, mini computers, and data telemetry to collect images of insects.
With increasing recognition of the importance of insects as the dominant component of almost all ecosystems, there are growing concerns that insect biodiversity has declined globally, with serious consequences for the ecosystem services on which we all depend.
Automated camera traps for insects offer one of the best practical and cost-effective solutions for more standardised monitoring of insects across the globe. However, to realise this we need interdisciplinary teams who can work together to develop the hardware systems, AI components, metadata standards, data analysis, and much more.
This WILDLABS group has been set up by people from around the world who have individually been tackling parts of this challenge and who believe we can do more by working together.
We hope you will become part of this group where we share our knowledge and expertise to advance this technology.
Learn about Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects by checking out recordings of our webinar series:
- Hardware design of camera traps for moth monitoring
- Assessing the effectiveness of these autonomous systems in real-world settings, and comparing results with traditional monitoring methods
- Designing machine learning tools to process camera trap data automatically
- Developing automated camera systems for monitoring pollinators
Meet the rest of the group and introduce yourself on our welcome thread - https://www.wildlabs.net/discussion/welcome-autonomous-camera-traps-insects-group
Group curators
Computational ecologist with interests in computer vision, citizen science, open science, drones, acoustics, data viz, software engineering, public engagement
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Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)
Wildlife Biologist and Marine Conservationist
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I am a science assistant doing research in semi-open nature-reserves, and monitoring grazing livestock as a main managing tool, thereby using tracking devices.
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Conservation MacGyver. PhD Animal Behaviour
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Wildlife Drones
Wildlife Drones has developed the world’s most innovative radio animal-tracking system using drones so you can track your radio-tagged animals like never before.
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I am a PhD student in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University, Australia. My research area lies in morphologically similar insect species classification, insect pest monitoring and insect population dynamic modelling.
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Field biologist for decades. Now senior specialist at WSP in Denmark. Involved in monitoring of biodiversity of fungi, plants and animals.
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DIY electronics for behavioral field biology
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Kia ora. I'm an ecologist at Lincoln University in Aotearoa-New Zealand. In these decades of rapid environmental change, I've turned myself into a human ecological monitoring machine (~1.5 millon observations so far since 2003). I'm now working on how to format and share my data.
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Ocean Science Analytics
Marine mammal ecologist and online technical trainer
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Are you excited by the potential for new technologies to help monitor the natural world? Do you enjoy communicating your passion for technology and nature with diverse audiences? We are seeking an enthusiastic...
2 February 2023
Are you stuck on an AI or ML challenge in your conservation work? Apply now for the chance to receive tailored expert advice from data scientists! Applications due 27th January 2023
18 January 2023
2
Careers
PhD position (m/f/d) in Insect Ecology and Conservation
Andrew Fairbairn
This position focuses on the ecology aspect of the project, while a second PhD in Ilmenau will be dealing with programming/AI development. Because of the high temporal resolution of our data, we can investigate how land...
9 January 2023
Careers
PhD - Sensory ecology of vespine wasps
Duncan Wilson
a technology-led solution to understanding the honeybees of the wasp world
8 December 2022
Five articles that include conservation tech published at Mongabay
20 October 2022
Nice overview paper on technological advances to improve insect monitoring
16 September 2022
2
Job opening at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
19 August 2022
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February 2023
event
November 2022
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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We have been using a 4k Logitek Biro web camera, which is in a housing with LEDs for illumination. We use this mainly out of legacy, and the image quality is good but we think we... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 13 hours 41 minutes ago | |
Hey Tom,Since the output is dependent on a couple of factors such as the solar irradiance of the place, shading from the canopy, the type of solar panels (mono, poly or amorphous... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Camera Traps, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Sensors | 6 days 22 hours ago | |
We have also thought about these sorts of things. We have chosen to keep the light on continuously for the night, but turn it off before dawn to allow the moths to fly away before... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 3 weeks 2 days ago | |
This sounds like an interesting challenge. I think depth of focus and shutter speeds are going to be challenging. You'll need a fast shutter speed to be able to get shape images... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 1 month ago | |
Awesome! it would be great to hear how you get on, maybe you can share your results here when you have them. Is the camera only for the Pi? That could be a problem for scaling as... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Sensors | 1 month 4 weeks ago | |
Yes. I think this is really the way to go! |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Camera Traps | 2 months ago | |
Thanks so much to @JoeBowden for recording this video of his unboxing of the AMI-Trap (Automated Monitoring of Insects Trap). Joe and... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 2 months ago | |
Hi Julien, we are working with the Luxonis OAK-1 which can run lightweight detection models (e.g. YOLOv5n/s) directly on-device. However you will still need a host, for... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 3 months ago | |
Hi there!I am a field biologist and research technician working with ecosystem monitoring at the research station Zackenberg in Northeast Greenland. For the last couple of years... |
+6
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 3 months 1 week ago | |
My most prized camera trap image - a hummingbird caught on camera! |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Camera Traps | 4 months 1 week ago | |
Might be good to add this to the 'Automated Camera Traps for Insects' group |
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Camera Traps, Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 4 months 1 week ago | |
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... |
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AI for Conservation, Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Camera Traps | 6 months ago |
Project introductions and updates
2 August 2022 11:21am
4 February 2023 2:53pm
@jamiealison : OpenCV for image processing and PyTorch for classification
@tom_august : We'll work on accumulation curves this summer to compare different schedules/sampling approaches; we don't have enough data to answer your question yet. Regarding the camera we were using a RICOH WG-6 but the image quality is not good enough so we will replace it and are looking for other options. Which one did you use?
5 February 2023 7:25pm
Job: Building a network of conservation tech across continents
2 February 2023 1:50pm
Solar panels in the tropics
26 January 2023 12:28am
27 January 2023 1:23pm
Hi Tom,
I'm with Akiba, you have to test. A collaborator has deployed solar-augmented kit in secondary jungle and some of them got enough light, and others didn't, so it can work. The open circuit voltage of solar panels doesn't change a whole lot in dim light, but the current drops drastically. So you would choose an oversize panel of the same voltage (or a bit higher).
Thanks
27 January 2023 3:56pm
I've been intrigued by this topic. Thinking about ways you could use drones or some kind of launcher to deploy panels above the canopy. Sadly I live in the great white north so I have no way of testing any concepts. Maybe even some kind of solar balloon that could float above the canopy. Interesting design problem.
30 January 2023 10:10am
Hey Tom,
Since the output is dependent on a couple of factors such as the solar irradiance of the place, shading from the canopy, the type of solar panels (mono, poly or amorphous) and orientation of the panels, etc, I'd suggest you use a software to simulate the different parameters to get an almost accurate estimation of the output. You can try PVsyst- it has a free month trial (I haven't used it before but I hear it's great) or any other PV software :)
Western Section of The Wildlife Society 2023
25 January 2023 2:09am
Apply Now: AI for Conservation Office Hours
18 January 2023 5:15pm
What is the best light for attracting moths?
17 October 2022 3:12pm
2 November 2022 10:16am
We are about to try that by modifying the new traps that we build. [email protected] will know more about what we have tried so far. One thing that I know he wants to try is to use glass tubes with good transmission properties
27 December 2022 2:39pm
If people come to any findings about loght trap lights let us know!
Another question i had on this front is about how continuous do light sources need to be?
Since us and @Hubertszcz are controlling our lights anyway with an Automated relay, we can potentially reduce power consumption in a couple different ways. For instance (hypothetically) maybe insects wouldn't care if we turned the lights off every 5 seconds for 3 seconds . Maybe they would even prefer blinking lights? Maybe they would hate it even if the light took a 20 second break every 10 minutes?
I have no idea, but if anyone else has thoughts, let us know!
13 January 2023 12:33pm
We have also thought about these sorts of things. We have chosen to keep the light on continuously for the night, but turn it off before dawn to allow the moths to fly away before predators arrive.
We are going to be trying out the EntoLEDs and LepiLEDs in Panama in the last two weeks of January, I'll post here on my thoughts.
PhD position (m/f/d) in Insect Ecology and Conservation
9 January 2023 12:53pm
Capture And Identify Flying Insects
30 December 2022 7:34pm
3 January 2023 1:55pm
This sounds like an interesting challenge. I think depth of focus and shutter speeds are going to be challenging. You'll need a fast shutter speed to be able to get shape images of insects in flight. Are you interested in species ID or are you more interested in abundance. having a backboard on the other side of the hotel would be a good idea to remove background clutter from your images.
Cameras - pros and cons
21 September 2022 2:04pm
23 November 2022 2:58pm
Hi Liz, unfortunately you will still need a Raspberry Pi as host for the OAK-1 camera to reproduce our hardware setup. It's also possible to use another Linux-based system (e.g. Raspberry Pi alternatives), but I didn't test this myself and the setup process will be different to our documentation (and probably not so straightforward). I'm planning to publish the documentation website in the next weeks, but I can already send you detailed information about putting together the hardware if you are still interested.
7 December 2022 1:03am
Hello,
I'm working on a light weight light trap based on Bjerge et al 2021, however I opted to use an ArduCam 64mp (9152 x 6944 resolution). Designed for the pi specifically and at $60 it checks many of your criteria. I haven't put everything together yet so I can't speak for white balance and power usage, but the autofocus appears to work well from initial tests, and it is tiny.
Cheers,
Hubert
8 December 2022 4:06pm
Awesome! it would be great to hear how you get on, maybe you can share your results here when you have them. Is the camera only for the Pi? That could be a problem for scaling as Pis are quite hard to come by at the moment.
PhD - Sensory ecology of vespine wasps
8 December 2022 12:47pm
Metadata standards for Automated Insect Camera Traps
24 November 2022 9:49am
28 November 2022 4:37pm
I did attend the webinar and had a strong feeling that this standard will be well supported and taken up in the camera trapping community! I would also love to hear if someone has tried to use it.
30 November 2022 11:11am
I've added this to the main camera trap thread as it would be good to get thoughts from those folk too.
2 December 2022 3:58pm
Yes. I think this is really the way to go!
AMI-trap unboxing - Automated moth monitoring system
1 December 2022 9:44am
Easy-RIDER project Workshop IV: Pollinator monitoring recording
17 November 2022 2:39pm
In case you missed our webinar on Pollinator monitoring, here is the recording.
We had presentations from three teams who will be presenting their work in designing automated monitoring tools for flower-visiting insects, different ways for creating datasets for training machine learning algorithms for insect identification and how these new technologies can be integrated in traditional monitoring schemes. The talks were followed with a discussion session.
Implementation of video surveillance to quantify the predation rate
25 October 2022 4:26pm
3 November 2022 10:16am
RaspberryPi-maggedon!
We are having this problem too and it might be worthy of its own thread! The lack of RaspberryPis is a big problem and we are currently looking into alternatives. We haven't found one yet, but if we do I will let you know. @Max_Sitt might have some suggested alternatives for his system?
4 November 2022 10:54am
Hi Julien,
we are working with the Luxonis OAK-1 which can run lightweight detection models (e.g. YOLOv5n/s) directly on-device. However you will still need a host, for outdoor deployment Raspberry Pi (e.g. Zero 2 W) is perfect. But for testing you could also use another Linux-based system as host device or just connect it to e.g. your notebook. You can find more info in the Luxonis Docs.
Regarding the Raspberry Pi availability, this blog post from Jeff Geerling probably sums up the current situation pretty well. I hope in Q1 2023 the situation will get better, but at the moment nobody really knows for sure.
Welcome to the Autonomous camera traps for insects group!
1 August 2022 10:52am
7 October 2022 10:45pm
Hi folks! Great to have this group online! I actually am a marine ecologist specializing in bioacoustics but recently joined a Pollinator Monitoring group a Cal-State San Marcos and am helping with an automated camera aspect of the project. We are using the PICT guide and recently migrated to use of VIAME for insect track detection (well, we are just trying it out now). Very exciting work, look forward to learning from you all! Has anyone worked work PICTS?
- Liz Ferguson
29 October 2022 1:13pm
Hi Tom
I am a farmer in Devon researching silvopasture with several research organisations. I have just landed a farmer lead grant to research dung beetles using camera traps and AI. I am collaborating with Rothamsted.
Do you have any tips on sourcing the right camera trap please?
Andy
30 October 2022 8:52am
Hi there!
I am a field biologist and research technician working with ecosystem monitoring at the research station Zackenberg in Northeast Greenland. For the last couple of years we have been cooperating with Toke Høye and have deployed his timelapse cameras on Dryas flowers to monitor polinator activity but also to compare to our nearby flower phenology monitoring plots. We have also done yellow pit fall trap monitoring in plots and have a long time series of 25 years. We are considering testing camera based methods for this though and I am happy to see many folks working along those lines. Hopefully I can get some inspiration here and we can start testing it out.
Cheers, Lars
Workshop IV: Pollinator monitoring
21 October 2022 12:27pm
3 November 2022 8:18pm
4 November 2022 9:10am
New conservation tech articles from Mongabay
20 October 2022 7:45pm
Most interesting images / sightings 'caught on camera'
12 August 2022 2:50pm
26 August 2022 12:07pm
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.
29 August 2022 6:18pm
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.
26 September 2022 10:43pm
My most prized camera trap image - a hummingbird caught on camera!
Counting insect density automatically with Intel RealSense D455?
31 August 2022 3:54pm
23 September 2022 12:06pm
Might be good to add this to the 'Automated Camera Traps for Insects' group
Emerging technologies revolutionise insect ecology and monitoring
16 September 2022 10:11am
Identify animal from Image
2 August 2022 1:37am
2 August 2022 2:54am
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.
2 August 2022 10:24am
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
Workshop III: Designing machine learning tools to process camera trap data automatically
1 August 2022 10:35am
Workshop II: Assessing automated insect monitoring
1 August 2022 10:23am
Workshop I: Automated moth monitoring deployments
1 August 2022 10:12am
3 February 2023 8:36pm
Follow-on thought! You are not far from @KPMcFarland who has been running moth traps through 2022 up in Vermont