Camera Trap for Wildlife Study Presented by Niyaz N Guided by Dr André Pittet a Camera Trap team effort….

Aim of the Project was … To develop a system that automatically takes pictures of animals in the wild, triggered by their movement. Characteristics: simple to install and operate, reliable, rugged, low power consumption, flexible, cost effective

Design Goals that was taken up Multi function board which has … Motion detector circuitry With selectable sensitivity adjustment User Selectable options like Delay between pictures Delay for camera refresh Picture mode..single, double,triple, movie Day / night / 24hr operation Support for Slave flash Remote/Multi camera triggering Dual detector support Support for Analog/Digital Camera Interface circuit and controller

How it was designed ?… Basics…. Detection of Animal using Passive methods Passive IR detection used Fresnel’s lens focuses to IR detector Trigger the camera when detected Other issues … Giving periodic refresh to the camera to prevent shutoff Operating the slave flash only when needed Flexibility to the operator for day/night/24hrs operation

How Is It Done ?…

Available User Settings … EXTRN 00 – OR 01 – AND 1X – EXTRN ONLY Delay b/n Pic Sec Sec 10 – 2 min 11 – 15 min Day /Night 00- Day only 01- Night only 1X- 24 hr Refresh Rate min 01 – 2 min 10 – 2 hr 1X – Always On Picture Mode 00 - Single 01 - Double 10– Triple 11 - Movie

Program Modules… Startup This module contains the initialization of the PIC and giving a delay of 2 min for power supply settling; Pulsing the test/red LED Refresh Module This contains the refresh pulse program depending on the user setting Extrn_Occurred PIR_Occurred Trigger and Delay Module Deals with the triggering pulse and the flash pulse Deals also with the delay between pictures Init_interrupts – to initialize the interrupts Interrupt Module Handles the interrupts- change in PIR/ Extrn & Refresh Timer timeout

About the Program… The Program Checks Day / Night setting is correct Whether it is Extrn Only mode and if it is, does not trigger when PIR triggers Whether it is Extrn OR Mode, if then triggering immediately If it is Extrn AND mode, it checks the occurred flag and if set triggers, otherwise sets the occurred flag correspondingly and waits for 15 sec for the other occurrence(PIR/EXTRN)

More about the program… It also considers … Flash output is enabled only during Night Continuous Flash output in Movie Mode Delay between Flash and trigger is taken depending on Refresh Delay setting To give the periodic refresh even during the delay time between pictures

Results …both quantifying and qualifying The Power requirements were measured The whole board When idle mA With Refresh pulse output mA With Refresh and trigger mA PIC uA The board functionality was tested with additional detectors

To conclude … Camera traps thus give a glimpse into a world which standard photography cannot capture. Animals that would never show themselves in the presence of humans are perfectly willing to make an appearance around the inanimate camera trap system. As a result, a variety of interesting wild creatures can be photographed in their habitat without resorting to the use of captive subjects, trained behavior or artificial environments. Camera-traps are thus becoming an indispensable tool for studying wildlife. They can provide irrefutable evidence of presence as well as data to estimate densities of species.

Some things about PIC 16F628… Low Power 32Khz clock typical 1uA standby typical 16 I/O Ports 3 Timers Analog Support 2K x 14 Flash Program Memory 224 x 8 RAM / 128 x 8 EEPROM Data memory

More on Fresnel Lens

More on PIR

More on How system detects

Pyroelectric Sensor The pyroelectric sensor is made of a crystalline material that generates a surface electric charge when exposed to heat in the form of infrared radiation. (EG: Lithium Tantalate ) When the amount of radiation striking the crystal changes, the amount of charge also changes and can then be measured with a sensitive FET device built into the sensor. The sensor elements are sensitive to radiation over a wide range so a filter window is added to the package to limit incoming radiation to the 8 to 14um range which is most sensitive to body radiation.