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Using Raspberry Pi and iOS App To Catch Rhino Poachers
v3rgEz writes "Cambridge Consultants has rigged together about a hundred motion-triggered cameras around Kenyan watering holes to help catch and dissuade elephant poachers. 'The challenge was to create a remote monitoring system that was robust enough to withstand extreme weather conditions and animal attacks and could be easily hidden in any surroundings – all within the available budget,' according to one of the projects leads. And to help make sure all those cameras are being monitored, the team has released an iOS app that lets users review, tag, and flag images, tracking what kinds of animals pass by and keeping an eye open for any human predators on the prowl."
I will start caring when they release an Android or HTML5 client. Choosing the most expensive platform is not a good solution when spending taxpayer's or publicly funded money, it seems more like the project team wanted to have new shiny macbooks air so they were able to develop for IOs.
Nice idea, but won't this help poachers as well? At the least the public app will help them to locate
- elephants
- park rangers
- the cameras themselves
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
99 raspberry pi(e)s in the outback, 99 raspberry pi(eeeeeeeeee)s...
(poachers|rhinos|monkeys) take one down and smash it around...
98 raspberry pi(e)s in the outback...
Come on guys; sing it with me!
'The Naked Prey' old film but is on netflix. Pretty good and some good documentary sections. (Elephants getting shot is a bit graphic!)
iOS?! Apple. SHEEPLE! walled garden. APPLE! lol. apple. closed. apple. no innovation, dead. Apple. Made in China. apple
GOOOGLE! gooogle. Google! do no evil. Chromebook. Google! GOooOGLE! goooglE! ANDROID. google. gooo-glE. Made in USA.
Robert Rankin
Not really useful at this moment as all communication must go through NSA servers first. After clearing by US agencies some info will be returned back.
Developers, before creating software check with U.S.A chamber of commerce if allowed. Safety of children and fighting terrorism is much more important.
Reading TFA I understand they are using a mesh of Raspberry Pis that can sense motion and subsequently sending (at-least) a still image to a server somewhere. The same unit is also monitoring sound so the network can triangle gunshots using microphones (for an immediate police response). And obviously these units must be durable and low maintence.
What I'd like to know is how are they drawing power while remaning hidden? It seems solar *has* to be part of the equation, hasn't it? I can't see how they power those rasberry Pis + transmitters.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
i looked up what the penalty for poaching is an found out some interesting info.
- wildlife tourism is the backbone of the Kenyan economy
- before last June (2013), the punishment was a fine of around $480 and maximum jail time of two years, which were very rarely imposed.
- at the start of June, Kenyan parliament changed the fine for poaching to a $120,000 fine and a potential 15-year jail sentence.
Kenya only has 8,500 elephants and 1,025 rhinos. if you think the punishment is too harsh then you should consider that poaching is destroying an essential part of their economy. honestly, i think the punishment should even higher because it's equivalent to economic treason. i say treason because when the animals are (nearly) wiped out, tourists will go to other countries and give money to them instead.
if you have obstinate views on ethics and morality, you should stop reading here and if you are a mod, remember there is no "-1 I disagree!"
i'm no tree hugger but there is also the consideration of what is the value of a human criminal (extremely common) versus the value of one of these animals (very rare in comparison). if you REALLY want to get the message across (desperate times call for desperate measures?) then having public executions for poachers seem like it would be a sizable deterrent for teens who want to make a quick buck (ivory is >$1000/kilo). it's an issue of ethics and morality: for the good of the state versus the good of the individual.
feel free to mod "+1 OMG WTF?!"
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
From tfa I read, "As a result, the expectation is that park rangers can pinpoint the location of poachers and intervene immediately, the firm said." As I understand it, Kenyan park rangers intervene by shooting the people they think are poachers on sight. Interesting that UK doesn't extradite if the person to stand trial might get the death penalty, but exporting this stuff that facilitates the death penalty without trial is ok. I suppose it's the same as exporting firearms - or rather, firearm optics.
Also, no: I don't know better than the people in Kenya about how to solve their poaching problem, although I have to wonder if horn farming wouldn't reduce the economic pressure.
That's Raspberry Pi with a 'p'. You'd think the /. editors could at least catch simple spelling errors in article titles.
why not android if just for cheaper phones / more unlocked ones. Do they want tourists to use this? that good till they get the big data roaming bill.
Elephants or Rhinos?
It's rhino poachers targeting elephants, obviously. There aren't many animal species that could take on an elephant and live to roar the tale anyway.
Ezekiel 23:20
Probably the lag and crashing of Android left them no choice.
The cost of a raspberry pi, ANY sort of wireless connection and ANY camera alone are going to exceed the cost of ready made wildlife camera.
He'll the local sporting goods store sells wifi enabled animal cams for well under $100. You'd want something other than wifi for ranges needed on the savanna, but I can't imagine asking a manufacture for a deal in exchange for publicity wouldn't have resulted in a far better solution for less money and certainly far less total cost.
Stop trying to shoehorn a raspberry pi into every space. This is a shitty hack.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
No mention whatsoever of the word 'China' or 'Chinese' in the article. So we just have to pretend that we have no idea why elephants, rhinos, tigers, etc. are being killed. Nothing to do with small-penised Chinese scum, of course, because we have to keep pretending that "We're all the same", while our Jewish 'masters' flood our countries with millions of wonderful third world people, right?
The Jews think long term, obviously over the next few centuries they want to wipe out European Aryans since those are the only people strong enough to defeat Jewish hegemony.
It's a bit like how we pretend that we don't know why hundreds of thousands of people have died in recently "liberated" countries.
I'm glad you agree that people should take responsibility for causing problems in other people's sovereign countries.
It's pretty obvious that all 3 posts (so far) are from the same person, stop fucking about you vile racist shit-eater.
What a brilliant rebuttal. Well done - you get ten points for using the magic word today. ("Racist").
Do you have any intelligent rebuttals to anything WE said? (I wrote the first two posts, not the third, but totally agree with the third. Where have you been? Isn't YOUR country being flooded with millions of unwanted third world parasites? Let me guess - you actually believe the JEW media when it tells you that 'everybody' just 'loves diversity', right? You moron.)
I say rig the friggin' Raspberries with friggin' lasers on their friggin' IO ports for a much faster solution to the problem.