Autonomous camera traps for insects provide a tool for long-term remote monitoring of insects. These systems bring together cameras, computer vision, and autonomous infrastructure such as solar panels, mini computers, and data telemetry to collect images of insects.
With increasing recognition of the importance of insects as the dominant component of almost all ecosystems, there are growing concerns that insect biodiversity has declined globally, with serious consequences for the ecosystem services on which we all depend.
Automated camera traps for insects offer one of the best practical and cost-effective solutions for more standardised monitoring of insects across the globe. However, to realise this we need interdisciplinary teams who can work together to develop the hardware systems, AI components, metadata standards, data analysis, and much more.
This WILDLABS group has been set up by people from around the world who have individually been tackling parts of this challenge and who believe we can do more by working together.
We hope you will become part of this group where we share our knowledge and expertise to advance this technology.
Check out Tom's Variety Hour talk for an introduction to this group.
Learn about Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects by checking out recordings of our webinar series:
- Hardware design of camera traps for moth monitoring
- Assessing the effectiveness of these autonomous systems in real-world settings, and comparing results with traditional monitoring methods
- Designing machine learning tools to process camera trap data automatically
- Developing automated camera systems for monitoring pollinators
- India-focused projects on insect monitoring
Meet the rest of the group and introduce yourself on our welcome thread - https://www.wildlabs.net/discussion/welcome-autonomous-camera-traps-insects-group
Group curators
- @tom_august
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Computational ecologist with interests in computer vision, citizen science, open science, drones, acoustics, data viz, software engineering, public engagement



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- @klwilson7
- | He/Him
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
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- @nlubcker
- | Dr
Results-Driven R&D Project Manager | Data scientist | I'm a versatile professional with 10 years of global experience in conservation and research.
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Conservation MacGyver. PhD Animal Behaviour
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PhD student working on wild bee conservation in orchards
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- @guyh3rrm
- | any
Cardiff University
I am a PhD candidate exploring video approaches to automate the detection of ecological interactions and exploring how such methods can improve the depth of quantification of interactions
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- @JDCrall85
- | He/Him
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- @nick56swim
- | He
I am an IoT and embedded ML developer. I am also a nature enthusiast with keen interest in conserving the endangered species
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- 4 Groups
- @mihow
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- @ggmelone
- | she/her
University of Wisconsin-Madison
I am an ecologist and entomologist interested in the effects of climate-change driven stressors on plant-pollinator interactions. I use computer vision camera traps to collect high quality data on insect activity!
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- @jcbotsch
- | he/him
I'm a population and community ecologist studying the effects of global change on insect populations.
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I am an evolutionary geneticist exploring insect seminal proteins, the microscopic keys to insect reproduction. My main research focuses on the manipulation of these proteins through genetic engineering to create environmentally friendly solutions for insect pest management.
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Sticky Pis are scalable, smart sticky traps using a high frequency Raspberry Pi camera to automatically score when, which and where insects were captured. Author: Quentin Geissmann, 2023
29 April 2025
Sharing this website that provides instructions on DIY hardware assembly, software setup, model training and deployment of the Insect Detect camera trap that can be used for automated insect monitoring. Authors:...
29 April 2025
Applications are open until April 15th
14 March 2025
Up to 6 months internship position to work on DiMON project which aims to develop a non-lethal, compact device that, when coupled with traditional entomological traps, captures high-resolution, multi-view insect images...
25 February 2025
Article
NewtCAM is an underwater camera trap. Devices are getting deployed worldwide in the frame of the CAMPHIBIAN project and thanks to the support of our kind early users. Here an outcome from the UK.
24 February 2025
Osa Conservation is launching our inaugural cohort of the ‘Susan Wojcicki Research Fellowship’ for 2025, worth up to $15,000 per awardee (award value dependent on project length and number of awards given each year)....
10 February 2025
Catch up on the highlights from our two-day Mothbox v4.5 workshop at Georgia Tech, where participants gained hands-on experience building and testing the Mothbox.
13 November 2024
Paper by Natalie Klug et al
6 October 2024
The AMI team in montreal is looking for a paid intern to do machine vision stuff!
3 July 2024
Come and do the first research into responsible AI for biodiversity monitoring, developing ways to ensure these AIs are safe, unbiased and accountable.
11 June 2024
€4,000 travel grants are available for researchers interested in insect monitoring using automated cameras and computer vision
6 June 2024
May 2025
September 2023
March 2023
November 2022
May 2022
event
April 2022
March 2022
Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Greetings, everyone! I'm thrilled to join this wonderful community. I work as a postdoctoral researcher at MeBioS KU Leuven having recently completed my PhD on "Optical insect... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 1 year 10 months ago | |
A new COST action has been announced which will focus on the use of computer vision for monitoring insects.InsectAI will run for 4 years... |
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AI for Conservation, Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Camera Traps | 1 year 10 months ago | |
Hi there,I am also trying to get some visuals from wildlife cameras of insects visiting insect hotels. Was wondering if you had gained any further information on which cameras... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 2 years ago | |
Further to @htarold 's excellent suggestion, you can replace that entire PCB with a simple USB breakout board (e.g. USB micro attached below) by removing the red wire and... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 2 years 1 month ago | |
Indeed, I'll be there too! I like to meet new conservation friends with morning runs, so I will likely organize a couple of runs, maybe one right near the conference, and... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Camera Traps, Geospatial | 2 years 1 month ago | |
Hi @ShwetaMukundan,this could be interesting for you:https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scirobotics.abb0839https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwiHf2T9bLUhttps://edition.cnn.com/2020... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Sensors | 2 years 1 month ago | |
Thank you so much for your reply! I'll look in to this now :) |
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Acoustics, Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Camera Traps, Data management and processing tools, Drones, Geospatial, Software Development | 2 years 1 month ago | |
Our project in very short is, setting up a sensor network for monitoring airborne biomass, mainly insects, birds and bats in near realtime, and to develop a forecast model to be... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Animal Movement, Geospatial, Sensors | 2 years 2 months ago | |
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... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 2 years 3 months ago | |
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... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Camera Traps, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Sensors | 2 years 3 months ago | |
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... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Sensors | 2 years 5 months ago | |
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... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects | 2 years 6 months ago |