Nature is full of wonders. Humans, with their unending curiosity and creative use of intellect, developed various ways to explore forests and jungle-based life forms. Whether it’s hard-to-track animals, birds, or the thousands of varieties of plants found in the wilderness, nature lovers and researchers keep on exploring them with advanced tracking tools from time to time.
Today, there are several types of cameras in different sizes, shapes, and technologies available for nature life explorations. These cameras have played a tremendous role in giving us a close look at a numerous variety of wildlife animal species.
With these camera options, one can make significant progress in studying and understanding wild animal lifestyles 24/7. One of the most used cameras in tracking wildlife is the trail camera, which has significantly improved access to wild animals, birds, and other species.
How Trail Cameras Work?
A trail camera, also known as a remote camera, is a specially designed-device for nature and wildlife photography and tracking. Photographers, nature enthusiasts, and property owners can use trail cameras to record the movement of animals.
These cameras are generally weatherproof and battery-operated. They are installed in places where the movement of animals is often recorded. Animal video recordings, photographs, and even alerts could be sent to the owner with the trail cameras installed in particular places.
Features such as auto recording, auto image capture, infrared lights, waterproofing, and an alert system are available in advanced trail camera solutions. The trail cameras should be installed on secure trees, or in such locations, where there should not be any disturbance to the animal with camera capture or recording sounds or light flashes.
Upon movement detection, the trail cameras get activated to capture video or photographs as required. The infrared light features allow quick activation as well as a nighttime vision to the cameras, enabling recording or capture even when there is darkness surrounding the places where cameras are placed.
Wildlife tracking is not an easy or one-day task. It could take weeks or even months to record any significant movement footage. In such situations, patience is the key. Along with patience, the cameras placed for trailing should have long battery life.
Several trail camera solutions have options to check the quality of the captures. This enables camera handlers to keep good-quality pictures and free up space by deleting those which are not-so-good ones.
Cellular Trail Cameras
With the improved connectivity, technology, and availability of budget-friendly devices trail cameras evolved into cellular trail cameras. These cameras utilize cellular connectivity for transferring captured footage or images to the cloud-based system.
These cameras require to be placed where sufficient cellular connectivity signals reach. After the capture of images or video, they can be directly viewed on smartphones connected to the cloud systems/accounts.
The cellular trail camera requires a subscription to 4G or 5G wireless network connectivity for updating the cloud system with the latest captures. As Wi-Fi is not a feasible solution for connectivity in forest areas, 4G or 5G sims are used for internet access in cellular trail cameras.
The prices of cellular trail cameras vary based on the technology and hardware available in them. These devices are highly useful in obtaining visual data immediately, and worries of data loss due to damage are lesser in comparison with conventional trail cameras.
Growing Applications of Trail Cameras
Trail cameras, with the right technology and the right place installation, can record miraculous footage. Never seen before pictures, natural wonders, and new discoveries can be possible with these remote-based cameras. Most importantly a closer look at wild animal lives can be obtained from trail cameras installed in various locations.
Below are some of the major areas where applications of trail cameras are growing
Nature and Animal Documentaries: The consumption of video content is rising across the globe, with the increased availability of 4G and 5G smartphones. Nature and animal documentaries watch time on free platforms and subscription-based over-the-top (OTT) platforms have been growing at a consistent pace.
The use of trail cameras for recording animal, bird, and plant movements is helping in making documentaries more insightful and engaging. Wildlife documentary filmmakers and photographers are capturing rare footage with the help of advanced trail cameras.
Hunting: Trail cameras act as remote cameras in supporting hunters to track the movements of different animals from distant locations. Using the trail camera, hunters can locate wild animals for their hunting targets. The trail cameras get activated with movements made by animals within the range to auto-capture the footage. Also, these cameras can be used for recording hunting trips by hunters.
Some of the major providers of trail camera solutions are Easy Storage Technologies Co., Ltd.; Browning Trail Cameras; Boly Media Communications Inc.; GSM Outdoors; Cuddeback; SPYPOINT; MINOX GmbH; Vista Outdoor Inc.; Wildgame Innovations; Bgha Inc.; Prometheus Group; and EBSCO Industries, among others. The growing demand for trail cameras is attributed to their rising technological advancements and growing use for documenting wildlife across the world.
