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LEPMON is a collaborative project to develop a high quality automatic insect monitoring system for nocturnal insects using automated cameras, AI and citizen involvement. LEPMON aims to be able to monitor a broad range of nocturnal insects, and for this takes high resolution images of a screen to which insects are attracted by UV light, using a 20 mp camera, every two minutes.   

The hardware, called Automatic Recorder of Nocturnal Insects (ARNI), was developed specifically for this project, and is currently deployed at over 50 locations throughout Germany, including locations specifically aiming to find rare habitat specialist species, and urbanization gradients to test the ability of the system to answer ecological questions. The system works on both solar and grid power. 

The large volumes of data collected are stored in a dedicated storage facility at the LiB in Bonn, and citizen scientists are helping with both identification of insects, and the deployment of traps. 

Deutsch

Technical details (hardware and software):

Controller: 

  • Raspberry Pi 4b 
  • Camera unit and basic specs: fixed focus Industrial camera Allied Vision, 20 MP
  • How the device is powered and power consumption:
    The device runs best on grid electricity, but can run a full night  on battery grid, when batteries are fully charged by solar power. 

Extra components:

  • UV light for attraction, flash LED, tripod, casing,  environmental sensors
  • Are images processed on-device (i.e. edge processing) OR device only collects images, processing off-site?
  • No on device processing, all processing happens off site
  • Price range: 3500 – 4000

Contact:
Roel van Klink roel.klink@idiv.de
Julie Koch Sheard
Dennis Boettger (Maintainer)
https://lepmon.de  

Developed at: Phyletisches Museum Jena, K2W Lights Jena, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig (iDiv).