Beetle Tracker

Beetle Tracker is a small lightweight pair of scripts used to tag beetle videos and then track them using idtrackerai. Analysis is completed after tracking and various files are generated

Usage

Beetle tracker runs in two phases. First a video must be tagged manually by a user. This generates a file which is used in the track phase. The tag phase can be run on virtually any machine, but the track phase should be run on a machine with a CUDA runtime.

Tagging

1. Open the ui with python tag/GUI_preprocessing.py
2. Click on the buttons until each requirement is complete. Follow onscreen directions or hints in the console
3. If tracking on a different computer than tagging on, move the video and generated .json file to the tracking machine

Tracking

1. Run the tracker tool python track/postprocessing.py <filename.json>

Install

prereq: python 3 installed (Tested with 3.10)

$ python --version
Python 3.10.12

Set up the tagging machine

git clone git@github.com:jsngalloway/beetle-tracker.git
cd beetle-tracker/tag

# Create and activate a python virtual environment for tagging
python3 -m venv ./venv
source ./venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Test your installation
python GUI_preprocessing.py

# End your session
deactivate

The beetle tracker tagging UI looks like this:

Set up the tracking machine

Before installation ensure the CUDA runtime is configured. (nvidia docs) Verify installation with nvidia-smi it should output something like:

Wed Jan  1 08:46:51 2025
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 560.35.05              Driver Version: 560.35.05      CUDA Version: 12.6     |
|-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
...

Install the requirements for beetle tracking:

git clone git@github.com:jsngalloway/beetle-tracker.git
cd beetle-tracker/track

# Create and activate a python virtual environment for tracking
python3 -m venv ./venv
source ./venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt