PIR Sensor ultra sensitive

For a longer term bug hunt solution you could perhaps consider adding a pan-tilt hat into the equation. That way you can run multiple interval captures in parallel, potentially covering a larger area.

A camera slider might be another option for this type of surveillance as you can run the camera parallel to a wall.

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pan-tilt-hat

https://www.adafruit.com/product/3353

https://www.waveshare.com/pan-tilt-hat.htm

https://www.arducam.com/product/arducam-pan-tilt-platform-for-raspberry-pi-camera-2-dof-bracket-kit-with-digital-servos-and-ptz-control-broad-b0283/

Lighting will indeed affect this, both in colour temperature and intensity. If you are using automatic iris on a camera then your depth of field will also reduce in lower levels of light potentially causing issues as well. If you are comparing between successive images though then it can be less of an issue as less variation between captures. Also some pre-processing can be done before the comparison and thresholds can be adjusted.

You could perhaps attach a LED illuminator to the camera so as you are only illuminating the area being captured and keep it at a consistent level. 

Ultrasonic sensors might be worth a look though as often insects can make a lot of noise at specific frequencies.

tonyd512 Bummer. One strong scent should be as good as another. Dawn dishwashing liquid has been a magic elixir for many other things.. maybe that.  Again, I wish you success.

beacon_dave said:

Ultrasonic sensors might be worth a look though as often insects can make a lot of noise at specific frequencies.

You may be on to something. I know Ultrasonic transducers/emitters are claimed to be able to repel rodents and insects etc. Maybe it could work in this scenario.

Came across this blog that provides one persons experiences (with ants).

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/i-used-an-ultrasonic-pest-repeller-against-an-ant-invasion-heres-what-happened

A friend of mine suggested this radar detector:

LD2410 sensor

Couldn't find anyone using it for bug detection online with a cursory search....

Thoughts anyone?

Another possibility might be Orange Oil.  It has been used to control (or discourage) termites.  We have been using in garden to control Fire Ants.

That's the sensor that was mentioned earlier as an example to read up on:

/technologies/embedded/b/blog/posts/experimenting-with-microwave-based-sensors-for-presence-detection#mcetoc_1h0c077bia

The LD2410 certainly can detect mouse-sized objects, but I didn't try anything smaller at the time. You'd need to give it a shot (or some other microwave sensor, if there is any that looks more suitable out there) to see if it is suitable, since probably the manufacture doesn't even have data for that (a lot of these low-cost microwave sensors might have been designed for human presence). There's a chance it could work, but really needs experimentation. A camera based sensor is possibly more effective, but needs processing as discussed by a few people.

Sorry this is a lot of information to digest

Thank you so much for the help

No problem, some of the info on engineering websites will be hard to follow initially, plus it's just the nature of the beast, that many raw sensors require some testing or bits of additional hardware/processing/software, many are not pre-packaged and configured, but if you have any questions people here can help. 

I've used some radar sensors from DFRobot. They have a unit https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2648.html similar to your image. I haven't used this device but I was curious of limit .75 meter minimum. How successful was your sensor on small object being close to the sensor.

Hi Sean,

That's the one! I got mine from AliExpress, where it's known as HLK-LD2410, it looks identical.

I suspect there would be no issue with detecting objects nearer than 0.75 meters but with an inaccurate distance measurement perhaps, but to be honest I can't recall much. I didn't do a lot of testing at the time, I was more focused on getting the code operational to make it work with Arduino, Pi Pico and PC, so that I'd have some flexibility to experiment later, and then I moved on to something else. I'll have to revisit it, and give it a shot (possibly at the weekend).

It's for sure a fascinating sensor, well worth experimenting with.