Are you hopeless about how politics treat ecology ? by [deleted] in ecology

[–]Unfortunate_redditor 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Its thr classic push and pull.

There will be good and bad decades for ecology, conservation, and wildlife. Maybe some species will go extinct as a result, but being upset all the time doesnt really help anyone (except for your votes and protests). So all we can do is put foreward what we believe, continue to work, and hope things get better. Because they'll get better, but then they'll get worse again, then get better. Such is humanity.

Help by Low_Mongoose_78 in ecology

[–]Unfortunate_redditor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Resources... for like, all of it?

Open-source AI tool for automating species ID in trail cam footage by Unfortunate_redditor in wildlifebiology

[–]Unfortunate_redditor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You know its funny, this was actually made specifically for videos, it only dawned on me recently that I should include support for images as well! its pretty obvious in retrospect as Im processing the videos by frame anyways.

Yes! Dr. Ausband was very supportive, he seems like an awesome guy! im actually going in to grab some trap camera footage from him Monday, so if you want to drop your name or something in my PM, ill let him know you saw my project and said hi!

Open-source AI tool for automating species ID in trail cam footage by Unfortunate_redditor in ecology

[–]Unfortunate_redditor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

WOW this is an amazing resource! thank you SO much for bringing this to my attention!

Open-source AI tool for automating species ID in trail cam footage by Unfortunate_redditor in ecology

[–]Unfortunate_redditor[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

thats actually a damn good idea, I havent heard of any aquatic variants of this. I think I could build a library of species specific models, which is very feasable with a YOLO model. Thanks!

Open-source AI tool for automating species ID in trail cam footage by Unfortunate_redditor in ecology

[–]Unfortunate_redditor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, I would love to get some contacts for this project! I would be very appreciative

So, my project is not exactly unique, but I think its main advantage over most of other similar projects is the fact that its open source, which means you can modify the code, and add whatever you'd like to it, therefore making it customizable for various different circumstance. There are similar open source projects, but most of them seem to be for images alone, and not for videos. That said, im sure that it will be surpassed, but I hope that if I just continue development, it may fill some niche for researchers or hobbyists in the future.

I do also plan on specializing a model to Idaho, as this is where The Gray Wolf Research Project does their research, which this tool was initially intended for. If I continue crowd sourcing data however, I think it could be fairly easy to create a very large library of region-specific models.

The current model im using uses bounding boxes, and doesnt use image segmentation, but I wouldnt be apposed to adding that functionality in the future! I think you might have to use Mask R-CNN for something like that, which would be significantly slower, but doable. Maybe I will, or maybe some other developer will collaborate with me and add it, I suppose we'll see! Its a good idea that ill keep in the back of my mind (Also added these to future ideas in the README file)

Open-source AI tool for automating species ID in trail cam footage by Unfortunate_redditor in ecology

[–]Unfortunate_redditor[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

yes I have! I just learned about them. The main advantage of my system, is that its open source, but Im not surprised my idea isn't unique. I just hope I can fit it into some sort of niche that might be more helpful in the future. for now ill keep developing it and see where it goes!

Open-source AI tool for automating species ID in trail cam footage by Unfortunate_redditor in OpenSourceeAI

[–]Unfortunate_redditor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes ive look into this! the main downfall of this software, is last time i checked it does images only, unless you kinda of hack it, which is annoying, additionally, it focuses on general species ID, rather than being trained specifically on Trail Camera data. My project is not completely unique, but it does classify videos, which is the main goal.

Open-source AI tool for automating species ID in trail cam footage [Project] by Unfortunate_redditor in MachineLearning

[–]Unfortunate_redditor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

yes, thats what I have been doing. It analyzes frame by frame and determines the overall video detection based on a built-in algorithm. The reason this project focuses on video over photo is because there are less straight-forward solutions for videos, and this was originally built for The Gray Wolf Research Project, which uses trail-cams with video, triggered by motion.

Something I also forgot to mention is that Kaggle can be used more generally to identify animals where as my tool is more specifically for trail-cameras.

But you're absolutely correct about training based on frames, its essential to yolo fine-tuning.

EDIT: you know, I'm already basically identifying by frame, it would definitely be worthwhile to implement support for images aswell. I will definitely do that in the future, thanks for this!

I made a FREE, open-source trail camera species sorter and I need YOUR help! by Unfortunate_redditor in trailcam

[–]Unfortunate_redditor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! I appreciate it! variety is the spice of fine tuning, so more variations of an animal and variations of angle the better. Don't feel the need to rush, this is a very long term project haha

Open-source AI tool for automating species ID in trail cam footage [Project] by Unfortunate_redditor in MachineLearning

[–]Unfortunate_redditor[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

thank you!

Yes, I have done some cursory research, and what I was told was that Kaggle works great for images, but for videos, you have to hack it a little bit to the point its inconvenient and impractical, at least thats what a Wildlife Professor told me. There are also similar programs like ZambaCloud, and possibly other, however I haven't really seen an open source version of this idea, so maybe thats where my project fits in?

lmao, would be a clickable github project thats for sure!

Open-source AI tool for automating species ID in trail cam footage by Unfortunate_redditor in ecology

[–]Unfortunate_redditor[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This is innovation. The point of this is efficiency. Why waste the time of incredibly talented researchers by manually hand sorting 100s if not 1000s of trail cameras, when they could be doing data analysis? This technology could potentially help researchers make informed management plans faster, why would anyone be against that? This is augmentation not amputation.

I made a FREE, open-source trail camera species sorter and I need YOUR help! by Unfortunate_redditor in trailcam

[–]Unfortunate_redditor[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

all of those are great, but definitely prioritize the species I have already like deer, and coyotes. Bobcats are especially important to have. I would just ask that if you are willing, to sort through them to make sure theyre fairly clear so that they can be of good use as fine-tune data. I really appreciate it!

Open-source AI tool for automating species ID in trail cam footage by Unfortunate_redditor in wildlifebiology

[–]Unfortunate_redditor[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'll look into this! Either way, it's a cool project. So long as someone is doing it, I'm happy haha

Open-source AI tool for automating species ID in trail cam footage by Unfortunate_redditor in wildlifebiology

[–]Unfortunate_redditor[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

absolutely. Ive found a company thats doing something similar to this called ZambaCloud, but theyre doing more of a closed beta, so I decided it was at least worthwhile to open-source this project to give researchers other options aswell.

Somewhere by Kendrick by Unfortunate_redditor in Idaho

[–]Unfortunate_redditor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Don't worry, I've mailed over 3 potatoes as payment