I'm working on an island bird species which is elusive and can only be found near their nest mounds—planning to deploy Timelapse cameras to monitor their breeding time behaviour and mating. I'm looking for cameras that start the video recording over motion detection for a longer duration( Must be equipped for working in low light/night conditions, Audio recording is also needed, Camera will be in the field for at least 2-3 months - Low maintenance). Kindly suggest brands and things to be taken care of before buying those cameras.
16 January 2023 2:38pm
These previous WILDLABS threads may be useful for you -
https://www.wildlabs.net/discussion/best-camera-trap-models-database-input-needed
https://www.wildlabs.net/discussion/best-practices-camera-trap-survey-guide-released
I am not personally aware of a combo camera-recorder. If you wanted audio as well, you'd probably want to throw up an Audiomoth or other type of autonomous recorder (SongMeter, Swift, etc.) alongside the camera!
Rob Appleby
Wild Spy
27 January 2023 12:04pm
Hi @vishnuthavara so you need a camera that does both timelapse and is motion activated? Something like this maybe:
Brinno MAC200DN Day/Night Motion Activated Wireless Outdoor Security Camera with Time Lapse : Amazon.com.au: Electronics
Brinno MAC200DN Day/Night Motion Activated Wireless Outdoor Security Camera with Time Lapse : Amazon.com.au: Electronics
11 February 2023 3:20am
Hi Vishnu,
Considering only motion detection video, it is possible to modify (most) camera traps to trigger an external piece of equipment like an audio recorder. I'm not aware of any suitable off-the-shelf recorder, but I can build you one. However many camera traps that will take video will also record audio, although the quality may not be suitable for all types of audio analysis.
11 July 2025 10:33am
We have a camera that could do this over some distance away due to a thermal module being involved. It will also record very high quality audio (Nature recording audiophiles rave about the microphone being used). can trigger on motion detection and also in addition to a thermal module has a low light module that can record in colour under moon light. Normally, the system records continuously and triggered for video alerting as it can be accessed remotely.
But it would draw much more power than microcontroller based systems (Around 5W for motion triggering) so you would need to place a solar panel with it and it would be quite a big one. This is offset by the ability to view from much greater distances, audio record, perfect visibility in pitch darkness.
Our next work packages will be to make a website to highlight all that, we don't have that yet. It would cost more than the brino as well, however likely you would need less instances (Maybe one versus many).
Below is a video review of the em272 microphone, which is what we use in our setup for recording the audio. We also merge in this external audio into our continuous video streams.
It could also record 24/7 continuously full motion h264 video with em272 microphone audio without replacing the media if you wish. It would need power for that whole time though.
Please contact me directly if this is relevant to your use case.
Carly Batist