NCBFr Posted December 17, 2021 Share Posted December 17, 2021 I put a couple trailcams in the woods behind my house and this is a pic that comes up two night later. Can anyone identify the thing on the left side of the pic? I ran it for a few more nights and moved it around and all I get is deer. Here is another pic before the event if you want to do a comparison. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NCBFr Posted December 17, 2021 Author Share Posted December 17, 2021 The Cam is a GardePro E6. The image is not a reflection. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hiflier Posted December 17, 2021 Share Posted December 17, 2021 Whatever it was definitely looks mechanized? How high was that cam above the ground? Also, during the four minute interval between the pics it looks the temp went up 2 degrees F. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MIB Posted December 17, 2021 Moderator Share Posted December 17, 2021 What is on the 6 pictures taken between the 2 you posted? I note that the reflective stick in the foreground is in the same location in both pictures so the tree or whatever the camera was attached do didn't get bent over. Hiflier's question about the camera height above the ground is a good one. What else can you tell us about the location? Is it in a city yard? Rural yard? Wood lot? Were you out there when the pictures were taken? Were you anywhere that you could have seen activity around the camera? My suspicion is you've got a trespasser. Would it be possible for them to be on an ATV? Or is it near a trash can .. could it be garbage pickup people working at night? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Catmandoo Posted December 17, 2021 Share Posted December 17, 2021 Edge detection does not show anything. In the top image, the object on the left looks man made and has writing on the side of it. I think that you have humans. On July 18, 2020, Gigantor posted a link in "Applied Scientific Methods" : "Edge detection software for night videos". It is in Windows Movie Maker. Way to go Gigantor. Since the original posting, only 15 downloads have occurred. That is a poor statistic. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
norseman Posted December 17, 2021 Share Posted December 17, 2021 2 hours ago, NCBFr said: I put a couple trailcams in the woods behind my house and this is a pic that comes up two night later. Can anyone identify the thing on the left side of the pic? I ran it for a few more nights and moved it around and all I get is deer. Here is another pic before the event if you want to do a comparison. Any vehicle tracks? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
norseman Posted December 17, 2021 Share Posted December 17, 2021 It reminds me of something like this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NCBFr Posted December 17, 2021 Author Share Posted December 17, 2021 11 hours ago, hiflier said: Whatever it was definitely looks mechanized? How high was that cam above the ground? Also, during the four minute interval between the pics it looks the temp went up 2 degrees F. About 4 feet. 11 hours ago, MIB said: What is on the 6 pictures taken between the 2 you posted? I note that the reflective stick in the foreground is in the same location in both pictures so the tree or whatever the camera was attached do didn't get bent over. Hiflier's question about the camera height above the ground is a good one. What else can you tell us about the location? Is it in a city yard? Rural yard? Wood lot? Were you out there when the pictures were taken? Were you anywhere that you could have seen activity around the camera? My suspicion is you've got a trespasser. Would it be possible for them to be on an ATV? Or is it near a trash can .. could it be garbage pickup people working at night? I cannot describe the chore I have had getting the pictures off the camera and to my PC. Attached are the ones I have been able to extract. I will get the others in the sequence over the weekend.. The trailcam is in a thin stretch of woods between my house and a lake. The woods are roughly 100 yards wide and it is in the middle and pointing east parallel to the lake and my yard. The trailcam was placed on a Saturday and the pictures were pulled on a Monday. There were about 600 day light pics of leaves blowing in the winds and about 12 night pictures. I have deleted all of the day light pics as there was nothing in them except me and my dogs. At the time that these shots were taken, my wife and I were snuggly tucked in our beds with our two german shepherds beside us. The trailcam is probably about 100 yards from our bedroom. Nobody that I know was out there. We live in a very rural area at the southern end of a watreshed with very fews houses. There are two streams that form a V with the lake at the southern end of the V and my house at the very tip of the V. There are a few houses that run down the middle of the V with woods on both sides protected by the streams. Pretty much every animal, known and unknown that lives in the mid-atlantic region inhabits or comes through this watreshed. An ATV is a very good guess and you are the second person to come up with it. Sadly, it is not an ATV as I (and especially my hyper vigilant dogs) would have heard it. Also, I inspected the area thoroughly and there is no tracks of any kind. 11 hours ago, Catmandoo said: Edge detection does not show anything. In the top image, the object on the left looks man made and has writing on the side of it. I think that you have humans. On July 18, 2020, Gigantor posted a link in "Applied Scientific Methods" : "Edge detection software for night videos". It is in Windows Movie Maker. Way to go Gigantor. Since the original posting, only 15 downloads have occurred. That is a poor statistic. Bingo on the writing. My hope was someone here could figure it out. I see two letters followed by something like "Analysis". My initial thought was the box was an IR detection tool but I have done dozens of various google searches and have not come across anything that looks like it. All - Thanks for all of the help. I have lived in the house 18 years and I have never seen anyone in the woods behind my house. However, with that said 99.9% of the time I am in bed in the middle of the night so who knows what happens then. Thus the reason for the trailcams. I am shocked and a little concerned that 1-2 days after putting out a cam to have this result. It is pretty difficult terrain with lots of deadfall. It is damn near impossible to traverse it at night without some soft of vision aid. The chances that someone stumbled on this by coincidence are extremely low. PS - The date and time stamp are incorrect. It is around midnight on either Saturday or Sunday night I believe the weekend of 12/4 but I could be off by a week. The pics are screen shots from my cellphone as for the life of me I cannot extract the raw file from the cellphone. I will eventually download the images directly from the memory stick. I just do not have any way to do it now and have not had a chance to pick up the gadget needed to do it. Also, the cam was set to snap 2 shots in succession with I believe a 10 sec lag from when the detector was triggered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hiflier Posted December 17, 2021 Share Posted December 17, 2021 (edited) Looks like a light or lights approaching in two pics? I'm going to go with a headlamp worn by someone (or someones) checking out your cam after their light picked it up while walking parallel to the lake shore? Not inconceivable considering an estimated midnight walk on a weekend. Maybe a neighbor's teenager? A night fisherman or two? Pop the cam in a different spot but looking in the same general direction. Edited December 17, 2021 by hiflier Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Catmandoo Posted December 17, 2021 Share Posted December 17, 2021 The object on the left is a mystery but has similar lines of a 'tackle box'. 'Trailcams', plural have been posted. Perhaps it is time to make a camera trap with cameras aimed at each other. The IR flash will not trigger the other camera. Audio may be important. Specs list video capability. So many settings, one has to be born in the Nintendo generation to cycle through the keypad sequences. Many trail cams do not have intuitive settings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Catmandoo Posted December 18, 2021 Share Posted December 18, 2021 What tripped the camera before the event? The temperature readings are variable. The jpg numbering does not make sense. I will make a wild ass guess: the box like structure is a dry box on the left front fender of an ATV, the left leg of the operator extends out and down with the tip of a boot having reflective items. See what happens when you answer the call to " see what you have been missing". At least the camera was not stolen. Python security cable will slow them down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NCBFr Posted December 18, 2021 Author Share Posted December 18, 2021 1 hour ago, Catmandoo said: The object on the left is a mystery but has similar lines of a 'tackle box'. 'Trailcams', plural have been posted. Perhaps it is time to make a camera trap with cameras aimed at each other. The IR flash will not trigger the other camera. Audio may be important. Specs list video capability. So many settings, one has to be born in the Nintendo generation to cycle through the keypad sequences. Many trail cams do not have intuitive settings. Plus to the person with superior reading comprehension skills. Sigh, it is time I admitted something, I actually deployed 3 cams. I deployed them pointing inward in to a "kill zone" with the lake at the base. I picked this trailcam in the hopes its narrow IR beam would enable me to deploy it in a way it would not be seen by anything that can see in to the IR spectrum. So the left cam was deployed inward below a fall line so you could not see it until you crested the hill and hopefully it would be too late, the center cam was positioned very close to my backyard towards the lake but in a small hollow so it would not be seen to the left or right, and the right cam was somewhat exposed but there was no good way of hiding it but was positioned with some purpose. I did not perfect the layout as I wanted to run it a few days to tune the cam's parameters as I did not have the time to do it right, but wanted to see how my new toys worked. Mistake #1. So I know your thoughts are man, what did the other 2 cams show? I first looked at the left cam and it had about 600 daylite pics that at the time I thought were BS so instead of deleting them one at a time I simply reformated the memory card (Dooh). I go the the center cam and it also has hundreds of pics but I think to scroll through them looking for the night pic. There are two, one showing what appears to be a large stick waiving in front of the camera and the second showing what appears to be an arm waiving in front of the camera. For reasons I cannot explain, I reformatted that drive as well. The roght cam is what you see as my brain finally caught up to my actions. Huh, not the first time this has happened to me..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NCBFr Posted December 18, 2021 Author Share Posted December 18, 2021 6 minutes ago, Catmandoo said: What tripped the camera before the event? The temperature readings are variable. The jpg numbering does not make sense. I will make a wild ass guess: the box like structure is a dry box on the left front fender of an ATV, the left leg of the operator extends out and down with the tip of a boot having reflective items. See what happens when you answer the call to " see what you have been missing". At least the camera was not stolen. Python security cable will slow them down. Good question. They are now set on video + pics with 0 second delay on the video and 5 second on the pics. No chance of an ATV, I would easily see its tracks in the ground and/or hear it. The ground is soft and full of new fallen leaves. It is a trackers dream. Also, my GS's bark every time a squirrel comes down a tree in there. The JPG numbers are an enigma. Your comment in the previous message on all of the configuration settings was spot on. My kids would say Boomer, you screwed up and they would be right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Catmandoo Posted December 18, 2021 Share Posted December 18, 2021 4 minutes ago, NCBFr said: it would not be seen by anything that can see in to the IR spectrum Don't worry about that. No animals on Earth can see IR. There is no IR at night so it would be a useless evolutionary mutation and they would be blind at solar noon. The serious question is why do you have human(s) at that location and time of day? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NCBFr Posted December 18, 2021 Author Share Posted December 18, 2021 6 minutes ago, Catmandoo said: Don't worry about that. No animals on Earth can see IR. There is no IR at night so it would be a useless evolutionary mutation and they would be blind at solar noon. The serious question is why do you have human(s) at that location and time of day? Not sure if I agree with you on IR but your other points are correct. I have 3 working theories. 1. It is fish and game or lake wardens and they are scanning the shoreline looking for people encroaching on the lakes. The shoreline is protected and you cannot approach it within 100 yards. They have an IR detection tool, see the cams, get out of their boat and investigate. 2. Hunter stumbles upon it. 3. To crazy to mention. I am going with #1 as there are many reasons why #2 makes no sense and #3 is crazy and I have no #4+. My hope and reason for the post is someone could figure out the lettering on the side of the device that would lead me to an answer. Happy for any other thoughts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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