Energy-efficient visual eyes system for wildlife

Wireless real-time surveillance systems are very valuable for monitoring ecology of wildlife, since the in-situ situation could be grasped immediately. Power source is usually constrained in the wild areas. Thus, in this paper, we developed a low power-consumption image transmission system (called energy-efficient visual eyes system) by integrating a MSP430 micro controller, FPGA circuit, a solar powered battery, a digital camera, and a GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) modem. In order to make a monitoring system suitable for circumstances of wild islands, the proposed system is designed with a packet transmitting strategy capable of enhancing pixel validity while effectively decreasing power consumption. Practically, the proposed system is deployed on a wild island in Taiwan near East China Sea, where is a habitat for migrant seabirds. The experimental results show that the system design is feasible to ecological monitoring and able to effectively maintain the completeness of images with energy efficiency. © 2011 IEEE.