Field build log
My Edge AI Wildlife Observer
I built a tiny field scientist that watches the world without uploading everything to the cloud. Jetson Nano for on-device classification, solar for power, and an SD card for data. No SIM card, no subscription, no latency.
Build time
3 weekends
Core brain
Jetson Nano
Power
Solar + SLA
01 / Plan
Design and constraints
I wanted a tiny field scientist that watches the world without uploading everything to the cloud. The Jetson Nano classifies locally, stores only confirmed sightings, and runs on solar.
Click to explore
Inside the observer
Selected component
Jetson Nano
Edge AI brain
Runs inference on the 128-core Maxwell GPU. Classifies species locally in ~200ms. No cloud required.
What I sourced
2 of 12 checked
How I wired it
MC4 connectors. Keep cable runs short to minimize voltage drop.
Fused at 5A. Controller handles float charging and low-voltage cutoff.
Fused 12V input. The buck converter provides clean 5V 4A to the Jetson.
Power via the barrel jack, not USB. USB cannot deliver enough current.
3.3V trigger pin wakes the Jetson from deep sleep on motion detection.
Ribbon cable through a sealed cable gland. Strain relief inside the box.
Inline on the 5V rail. Logs current and voltage per inference cycle.
Power budget lab
Will it survive the night?
This is my planning model for sizing the solar panel and battery. Adjust the sliders to see how conditions affect autonomy.
Power readout
The software stack
Wake manager
Listens for PIR GPIO interrupt. Wakes the camera and inference pipeline, then returns to sleep after timeout.
Capture service
Grabs a still frame from the CSI camera on PIR trigger. Timestamps and buffers for inference.
Inference engine
Runs MobileNet-SSD on the Jetson GPU. Returns species label, confidence score, and bounding box.
Logger
Writes detection records to SD: timestamp, species, confidence, crop, full frame, temperature, battery voltage.
Health monitor
Tracks GPU temp, battery SOC, SD card usage, and solar input. Saves hourly summaries.
Power optimizer
Dynamic sleep intervals based on time of day. Deep sleep at night, shorter intervals at dawn/dusk.
Ethics I follow in the field
I deploy only on land I own or have explicit permission to monitor.
The camera never records audio. It captures stills, not continuous video.
All data stays on the local SD card. Nothing leaves the device over a network.
I avoid nesting sites, dens, and sensitive habitats. The observer should not change what it observes.
If the device disturbs wildlife behavior, I move it. Observation is the goal, not intervention.