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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects / Feed

Camera trapping for insects is becoming a reality using advances in camera, AI, and autonomous systems technologies. This group discusses the latest advances, shares experiences, and offers a space for anyone interested in the technology, from beginners to experts.

Group curators

Tom August
Computational ecologist with interests in computer vision, citizen science, open science, drones, acoustics, data viz, software engineering, public engagement
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discussion

AMI-trap unboxing - Automated moth monitoring system

Tom August

1 December 2022 9:44am

Thanks so much to @JoeBowden for recording this video of his unboxing of the AMI-Trap (Automated Monitoring of Insects Trap). Joe and others in Canada, USA, UK and Denmark have...

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Tom August

20 February 2023 4:59pm

Here is the website where you can find more info about tue AMI trap.

https://www.ceh.ac.uk/ukceh-ami-trap-automated-monitoring-insects

Stephanie O'Donnell

20 February 2023 5:29pm

This video is so great - I don't know what I was imagining that you were building, but this is so much bigger and more involved than whatever I was vaguely thinking. Really cool to see! 

Side comment - could we make conservation tech unboxings a thing? 

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discussion

Solar panels in the tropics

Tom August

26 January 2023 12:28am

We are deploying automated systems in the topics and hope to use solar panels, but this closed canopy in most places I'm seeing this as a challenge.Past the obvious: 'find a...

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Harold Tay

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

Brett Muir

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.

Netty Cheruto

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 :)

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discussion

Cameras - pros and cons

Tom August

21 September 2022 2:04pm

So, what makes a good camera for an autonomous camera trap for insects?We use a web camera in our system, which seems to work well a lot of the time, it produces...

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Maximilian Sittinger

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.

Hubert Szczygiel

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

Tom August

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.

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discussion

Implementation of video surveillance to quantify the predation rate

Julien Peters

25 October 2022 4:26pm

Hello everyone,First of all, thank you for all the information on your great website. My name is Julien Péters and I am a PhD student at the University of Liège (Belgium). For my...

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Tom August

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?

Maximilian Sittinger

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.

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event

Workshop IV: Pollinator monitoring

Alba Gomez Segura

21 October 2022 12:27pm

This workshop is part of a series of online meetings to share experiences around the globe using automated technology (Cameras + AI) to monitor moths and other nocturnal insects.

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Valentin Ștefan

3 November 2022 8:18pm

This sounds amazing and I advertised it among my colleagues. Unfortunately, most probably I will not be able to attend, however, would be nice if you can provide the recording...
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discussion

Most interesting images / sightings 'caught on camera'

Simon Teagle

12 August 2022 2:50pm

A thread for people to upload the most interesting or unusual sightings recorded by their traps. To get the ball rolling here's a coy looking crow..

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Donald Hobern

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.

Kent McFarland

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. 

Carly Batist

26 September 2022 10:43pm

My most prized camera trap image - a hummingbird caught on camera!

Image

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discussion

Identify animal from Image

Jitendra Hushare

2 August 2022 1:37am

I am thankful to the members of Wildlabs net for giving us the right information to enable us to plan Bioacoustics solution implementation. It seems to be on track as of now....

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Akiba

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.

 

Tom August

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

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