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discussion / AI for Conservation  / 25 June 2025

Mini AI Wildlife Monitor

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Hi All!

I've been working on various version of small AI edge compute devices that run object detection and Identification models for ecological monitoring!

I've recently been working on creating a small and more accessible version using the Raspberry PI AI camera (Sony IMX500).

Video overview here:

 

Let me know your thoughts!



Megan Head
@meganhead

28 June 2025 12:41am

Hi Luke, 

This looks super cool. I'm wondering how well it works for insects. Things like size of critters that can be detected, distance over which they can be detected, and speed of movement. 

Cheers,

M

Ross Gardiner
@rossg
University of Exeter
AI and Electronic Engineer interested in insect monitoring and conservation technology. PhD student at the University of Exeter!

16 July 2025 2:51pm

Hi Luke, cool project - congratulations! 

I recently published a paper related to this topic, where we develop very lightweight CNN models to detect insects for low-powered hardware. I tested on ESP32-S3 rather than the Sony IMX camera, but would be really interested to see how well it works on this hardware platform. If you're interested, please reach out. 

The paper is available in early view here: 

https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-210X.70098

I also built a codebase for training similar architectures and deploying these. Which you can check out online: 

 

Thanks,

Ross