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discussion / Camera Traps  / 8 January 2025

CCTV or camera trap for 24/7 video recording

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Hi All,

After a failed attempt to use an out of the box wired system, we are looking for recommendations for a CCTV camera which are battery powered and record onto a local SD card. It's a bonus if it does WIFI. 

We are after something which can record 24/7 (including overnight) footage of animal behaviours, ideally for at least a few days at a time without human intervention. Solar panels are likely out of the question due to shading, but we could use an external battery pack if the unit allows that. I know this kind of cameras are now readily available, but there seems to be a huge range, so any personal recommendation (either positive or negative) would be appreciated! If there are camera traps which are well suited for this, we are also interested in that, it might be we are just not aware. 

Thanks

Mat



Akiba
@Freaklabs  | He/Him
Freaklabs
I'm an engineer and product designer working on wildlife conservation technology.
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8 January 2025 12:58pm

Hi Mat. 

You may want to try looking at dashcams. They are designed for continuous recording and store video on a micro SD card. They aren't power optimized so you may need some big batteries to get a few days of recording time. 

Hope that helps. 

Akiba

Kim Hendrikse
@kimhendrikse
I'm a software developer. I have projects in practical object detection and alerting that is well suited for poacher detection and a Raspberry Pi based sound localizing ARU project
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8 January 2025 2:56pm

Care to share the manner in which the out of the box wired system failed ?

You also mention recording animal behaviour day and night. Normal cameras, or cameras without IR-cut filters would need some external lighting for this, are thermal cameras an option? Specifically here, do you need to see colours or detail on the animals that might not show up in the IR spectrum? Asking this because thermal cameras or course avoid the lighting problem. And with the right choice can also dramatically drop the power usage, to something like 700mw for the camera and work in both day and night.

Rabboni Rabi
@rabi

24 January 2025 12:34pm

Hi,

 

I am using these for my current project:

 

They seem to be of good quality and support offline SD card storage. These run on 5V/1A. You should be able to run them for about two days on a 45 or 50,000mAh powerbank.

There should be UK versions of these.

However, like all CCTV manufacturers (atleast the ones i checked), downloading the continuous recordings isn't as easy as plugging in the SD card into your computer and copying the files.  The video files are deliberately made hard to read. Everything is through their app. You can download events (movement/sound) captured by the cameras though.