Who uses Timelapse?

TImelapse does not track its users, so no exhaustive list is available. Timelapse is made available without asking for any self-identifying information. This means that TImelapse does not track its users. Having said that, many Timelapse users have communicated with us, so we do have a good sampling of who is using it. We know that Timelapse is used by a broad international community for both long-term and short-term monitoring, and for both small and very large projects (many cameras, millions of images). This includes:

  • Academic Researchers (e.g., professors, graduate students)
  • Federal Parks Agencies (e.g., US National Park Service, Canadian National Park Service and others)
  • Regional Agencies (e.g., US state agencies, such as Idaho Fish and Game)
  • Independent Environmental Consultants as part of their contractual work
  • Project and Site-Specific Ecologists who use Timelapse to satisfy site-specific research goals
  • Zoos, such as Chester Zoo, UK as part of their biodiversity work
  • Local advocacy groups who use Timelapse to gather evidence of wildlife use in a threatened area
  • Image recognition researchers and developers who use Timelapse as a way to either tag data for model training, or to preview data.

Citations

Many academic papers cite TImelapse in one way or another. Instead of listing them all, we just point to Google Scholar, which in turns lists the citations to our own academic papers and Timelapse website relating to TImelapse.

188 citations to: Design Patterns for Wildlife-Related Camera Trap Image Analysis. Greenberg, S., Godin, T. and Whittington, J. Ecology and Evolution, Vol. 9 Issue 24:13706-13730. Wiley, December 2, 2019. This paper describes various design ideas and features behind Timelapse.

101+ citations to: A Tool Supporting the Extraction of Angling Effort Data from Remote Camera Images, Greenberg, S. and Godin, T. Fisheries Magazine, 40(6):276-287. American Fisheries Society, June. 2015. This is our first paper describing Timelapse as used by Fisheries Biologists.

144+ citations to the Timelapse web site itself, where 117+ citations are to the original timelapse website, and 27+ citations to the new timelapse website.

211+ citations to: Three critical factors affecting automated image species recognition performance for camera traps. Shneider, S., Greenberg, S., Taylor, G, and Kremer, S. Ecology and Evolution, 10(7), March 2020. Describes some of our work relating to key factors to consider when using image recognition, especially on the importance of considering how models are trained, which can seriously affect the recognizer’s performance.

24+ citations to: Automated image recognition for wildlife camera traps: Making it work for youGreenberg, S. University of Calgary, research publication. This report is oriented towards Ecologists, where it explains the advantages and pitfalls of image recognition, including a workflow of using image recognition in Timelapse.

Special mentions

Both Google and Microsoft provided modest grants towards Timelapse development (with no strings or requirements attached). This was done as an outright gift, and was managed by the University of Calgary.For th e

Google’s Manual for Biodiversity Monitoring at Supply Chain Sites recommends a workflow that includes Timelapse as the primary software system (in conjunction with AddaxAI (Megadetector) and SpeciesNet).

Megadetector, in its getting started with Megadetector guide and its README on its home page, calls out Timelapse as a popular and great way to review and leverage Megadetector’s recognition output.

Most MegaDetector users review their images with Timelapse, a fantastic open-source tool for reviewing camera trap images (very efficient even if you’re not using AI!). 

We also depend on other open-source tools that help users run MegaDetector (particularly AddaxAI , and open-source tools that help users work with MegaDetector results (particularly Timelapse). If you are looking to get involved in GUI development, reach out to the developers of those tools as well!

The AddaxAI web site lists its Timelapse integration (i.e., its ability to work with Timelapse) as one of its primary features.

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