Hi all,



As a sensory ecologist interested in visually-mediated behaviors of nocturnal animals, a major struggle I encountered early in my career was how to monitor these creatures throughout the night on a tight budget. Most infrared (IR) camcorders are expensive, have poor battery life, and are ill-suited for fieldwork. While newer models of camera traps might fill this niche, I wanted to share the recording setup I've configured in case you or someone in your lab might find it useful.



I have had great success modifying inexpensive, commercially available action cameras (GoPro Hero4 camcorders) to be IR sensitive, powering these units with cellular phone power banks, and continuously recording behavior overnight while using an array of a dozen cameras. In total, all components of a recording kit are available for under $150 USD at the time of this writing and can be easily assembled using the guidelines found in my preprint: DOI: https://doi.org/10.32942/X2531K

This specific IR recording kit is best-used when high definition video of focal animals is required. This may not be super useful to those of you monitoring areas for 30 days+ using camera traps, but if there is a specific area or animal you would like HD IR video of overnight, these cameras are an exceptional, low-cost method for filming. Below is an example of the footage captured using this set up.

I appreciated being able to chat at the variety hour today, I enjoyed hearing about all the ways you folks are using different camera traps + AI to make animal observations more efficient. It sounds like some of you have hacked GoPros before, but maybe others haven't come across these modifications before, so I figured I would post the info here just in case.



Cheers,

Jay