Technical Specification

The Sentinel connects to commercial camera traps to process captured images and transmit results of animal species detected by a neural network on-device. It includes a custom printed circuit board with a low-power microcontroller (Microchip SAM D21E) and an embedded computer with tensor processing unit (Google Coral SoM) for image processing. The circuit board also includes power management components, a camera trigger detection circuit, and microSD storage for processed image data. Communication modules may include cellular (Blues Wireless), LoRaWAN (Blues Wireless), or satellite (SpaceX) in addition to built-in WiFi. The circuit board is powered by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries and enclosed in a weather-proof housing.

Product Description

• Attach to a trail camera with a standard SD card slot

• Run on-board AI models

• Get insights sent over satellite, cellular, LoRa, or WiFi connectivity

• Long battery life enabled by customizable processing periods

Technical Specifications

Performance

• User-defined Photo Processing Periods

  • Photo count reached (every 10 photos, 30 photos, etc)

  • Set time period (every 6 hours, 24 hours, 3 days etc)

• Battery Life

  • Sentinel can handle ~800 cycles per charge with 7 batteries (max capacity)

• Model Support

  • YOLOv5 (including MegaDetector v5)

  • EfficientDet

  • MobileNet

  • ResNet

  • FOMO (Edge Impulse)

• Camera Support

  • Most commercial camera traps with a standard SD card slot

• External Memory Support

  • MicroSD (up to 1 TB)

  • USB (up to 1 TB)

• Power Consumption

  • Sleep: <1mA

  • Image Processing: 600mA-1A

  • Peak (for microseconds): 3A

Power consumption during activity states

Electronics

• Google Coral SoM (System-on-Module)

  • NXP i.MX 8M SoC (quad Cortex-A53, Cortex-M4F)

  • Google Edge TPU coprocessor (4 TOPS (int8); 2 TOPS per watt)

  • 8GB eMMC flash storage

• Microchip SAM D21E Microcontroller

• Spypoint Cell-Link Cable

  • 512MB SD to USB interface

• Communication Options

  • Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n/ac 2.4/5GHz)

  • Satellite (optional, SpaceX Swarm M138)

  • Cellular (optional, Blues Wireless Cellular Notecard with external SIM slot)

  • LoRaWAN (optional, Blues Wireless LoRa Notecard)

• Power Options

  • (preferred) 2x 18650 rechargeable lithium-ion batteries

  • (optional) 5x 18650 rechargeable lithium-ion batteries

  • (optional) External solar-powered battery pack (note this replaces all 18650 batteries)

  • JST connector

  • Micro-USB

Sentinel hardware components