Rana motionvision system is a motion detection that uses vision to detect the presence of objects within its visual field. Rana is based on the open source motion package for Linux, but has significantly enhanced motion detection capabilities. It has been designed top operate as an efficient camera trap system for recording the movements of small invertebrates, capable of operating autonomously in the field for extended periods. To date, Rana has been used a number of projects looking eusocialhymenoptera including studies of and activity in the vicinity of their nests and of the behaviour of hover flies and other pollinators at flowers and as a general purpose e-ecology tool for the automated remote observation of plant-pollinator interactions in the field. data-logger inside system box, showing typical bumblebee nest enclosure with nest entrance monitored by Logitech C525 USB camera
Rana system setup
Here we see a typical Rana setup for observing bumblebees in the vicinity of their colony. The colony is mounted on cork stilts inside an outer weatherproof housing. Bees are channelled in and out of the nest via a one way system. Each channel is monitored using a Philips Phillips SPC1330N autofocus USB camera which are connected to the Asus Aspire one data logging computer via USB 2.0 connections. This logging computer runs C code which implements a motion detector which is loosely modelled on the frog visual system. This motion code is running on top of a Linux kernel. This offers a relatively good real time performance on the relatively slow Atom N450 processor which was chosen to keep power consumption low. The data logger is connected to the outside world via 100 Mbit/second Ethernet. The system is controlled via a web interface on a remote monitoring computer, smart phone or tablet. With high end cameras like the both within Kew and also in the field in order to determine the pollinators of the rare in the Chiltern Hills. In addition, it has also been used with near infra-red night vision cameras to monitor the activities of nocturnal invertebrates including , and bed bugs. A recent ] by Red Butte Garden and Arboretum has used the system to observe thousands of hours of plan-pollinator interactions in the Utah desert. Some representative footage from the Utah study is shown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlRorxTKrJ4 [here. Rana was also showcased [in the Red Butte Garden newsletters in [https://issuu.com/redbuttegardens/docs/324041_winternewsletter [2016 and [https://issuu.com/redbuttegardens/docs/vol9_iss2.low_res [2017.
