Hi Oren. 

Since we interface our devices to many different camera traps, we've had the chance to observe the image quality (as well as the innards) of a variety of them. I would say that at the moment, we interface our devices to Browning camera traps compared to others by a wide margin. this was only in the last few years as Reconyx and Bushnell also used to be more popular. For image quality, I would recommend Browning Spec Ops and Recon Force. If you're on X or Instragram, I recommend checking out the videos from @cameratrapsue . She mainly uses Browning and they are a good example of the image quality. 

As an aside, we have no connection to Browning and do not receive anything from them. We're just trying to help :)

Akiba

Very cool! Looks like a repurposed case for other wildlife cameras?

Do you have custom electronics?

It sounds like you've exhausted everything exiftool can do, in which case,  YMMV, but I have a module that uses a combination of OpenCV and PyTesseract to pull metadata from the actual pixels:

https://github.com/agentmorris/MegaDetector/blob/main/megadetector/data_management/ocr_tools.py

Documentation for this module is here:

https://megadetector.readthedocs.io/en/latest/data_management.html#module-megadetector.data_management.ocr_tools

I have only really used this to extract time and date; my goal was to make it as robust as possible for time and date over a wide variety of manufacturers, rather than to find a wide variety of text.  But I expect it would be relatively straightforward to tune for a single bit of metadata and a single manufacturer.  I'm not sure whether it's worth literally using this module vs. just looking at the code and using that as a starting point,  or using the similar R example you linked to, but FWIW, if you try it out and get stuck, send me a few images by email and I'll see if I can tune it a bit to get what you need.

Good luck!

-Dan

Ok so I'll add my 2-cents here but only really in relation to the 'corrosion in seawater' part of the discussion. 

When I am releasing packages, sensors or moorings sub-surface I'm using (as has been previously mentioned) more expensive burned wire units that can be programmed for particular durations and then burn a wire to release or you come along and actively talk to the burn wire unit with a hydrophone/transmitter unit and sent it a burn signal when you are close by. 

One other option I found is to have galvanic links made up. These are small cylinders of alloy that are made up to corrode and degrade over time using a special recipe and a calculation based on your depth, water temp and salinity. You can get a bag of 50 of these links for not a high cost but they may only last for 2 weeks and the corrosion/release accuracy could be in the region of 4-12hrs I believe. Still its perhaps an option for things that are more static and not moving around into differing temp/depth zones.

The galvanic links I have been using are found at:

Read "Galvanic Timed Releases - International Fishing Devices" on

Galvanic Timed Releases - International Fishing Devices

For over 40 years, International Fishing Devices, Inc. has been the designer and manufacturer of Galvanic Timed Releases.

Some thoughts as I have experience working with some of the tech mentioned...

Corrodible pin

@htarold Did a great job explaining how that works. This pin is used in the pop-up satellite tags from Wildlife Computers, Microwave Telemetry, and Lotek Wireless. Biologging Solutions in Japan is also making a PSAT (I assume they also use a corrodible pin) and Star Oddi is also trying to develop the same. In short, nearly everyone uses the corrodible pin. 

Burn wire release

There is a patented design (Desert Star Systems) that uses burn wire (I forget the type of wire), and if my memory is correct, it can work in any environment (perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it works in air, too). You can Google that company to get more information, and they used to have some YouTube videos showing their burn wire design. 

Propellant-based release

I wanted to say 'explosive' release, but that's being a little dramatic. There is a pop-up satellite tag manufactured by Desert Star Systems that uses an explosive-based system (there, explosive, I said it). Instead of a pin, their nosecone has a chamber that you load gunpowder into, and upon release the gunpowder is ignited, causes combustion, the chamber cannot support the expansion, and the nosecone is released from the tag through force. It works in any possible environment. 

Galvanic timed release (GTR)

In my opinion, the biggest problem with GTR is that the timing is variable. It is heavily reliant on the water quality, and I have heard anecdotally that it is near impossible to truly know when the device will release. 

Unknown release

I know that Wildlife Computers was awarded some funds from the Office of Naval Research to develop a release package for recovering instrumentation from marine mammals when they haul out (think elephant seal). I believe this package is independent of a tag so you can use it as a carrier for other instrumentation. I don't know whatever came of this project, but it's Google-able. (Update: it's called the PRD-RP, and if you Google that you'll find it easily enough.)

Disclaimer: I used to work at Desert Star Systems, and consequently I know their releases well. Nothing I shared here is proprietary or a trade secrets. 

Hi,

I am using these for my current project:

Read "Amazon.in" on

Amazon.in

Read "Amazon.in" on

Amazon.in

They seem to be of good quality and support offline SD card storage. These run on 5V/1A. You should be able to run them for about two days on a 45 or 50,000mAh powerbank.

There should be UK versions of these.

However, like all CCTV manufacturers (atleast the ones i checked), downloading the continuous recordings isn't as easy as plugging in the SD card into your computer and copying the files.  The video files are deliberately made hard to read. Everything is through their app. You can download events (movement/sound) captured by the cameras though.