This looks wicked cool and definitely the sort of thing inatters might be interested in!
Given how many cameras I have set up around my house whose primary function is to observe wildlife (admittedly, many also have a home security function, too), it seems right up my alley to build one of these and set it up in my yard for some insect camera trap photos.
Insect surveys just got a whole lot easier - The Wildlife Society
Now the only real question is whether I should set it up next to my rain garden or next to my native meadow.
Depends on what type of insects you want to find.
@naturalist_nate You can try getting two camera traps. One for the rain garden and one for the native meadow. But it depends on whether you prefer watching butterflies or waterstriders.
I’m going to have to make a decision. I could probably justify the cost of one of these for now, but not two.
My rain garden does not hold water for extended periods of time. It takes runoff from my roof, driveway, and parts of my yard during rain events and it fills up, but the standing water is gone after a day or two. So the insects present there depend more on the plants that grow there than directly on the presence of water.
There’s lots of things about the deployment that can affect that. In my case, the two sites are fairly close together, but the plants vary a little bit. I don’t anticipate a huge variation, but probably some. Given that this thing operates based on a schedule and doesn’t run all the time, that’ll be a factor. And also in the linked video, the height of the camera can also be a factor. Seasonality is another. Weather. Lots of things. With my two spots being fairly close together, I anticipate some of those deployment-related factors to have a larger effect on what I find.
Interesting. Back in 2022 my entomology professor and I tried building something similar to this using 3D printing, a raspberry pi camera module, and similarly a backing for the focus. Our goal was to photograph pollinators with a colored cup of sugar water bait. We ended up going with a different project due in part to time constraints but it’s cool to see that someone has accomplished the vision.
Folks are definitely getting better at working out ways to use cameras to survey things other than larger mammals. Things like the Raspberry pi and 3d printing have definitely made that more attainable for more people. And things like this are definitely expanding the kinds of skills a field biologist needs.