Sensing Clues

Send detections and camera alerts to a Sensing Clues group as observations in the Cluey app. Each alert becomes one observation with the annotated photo and a link back to the full record. It is a notification channel, like email and Telegram: an observation is sent once and never changed. Connect is the record, Sensing Clues is the alert feed.

Before you start

This page connects AddaxAI Connect to a Sensing Clues group you already have. Sensing Clues is a separate platform; if your organisation does not use it yet, start at sensingclues.org ↗ first, this integration only sends to an existing group.

You need:

• A Sensing Clues account and a group. Cluey is the field app, Central ↗ is the web app where groups and members are managed, and Focus360 ↗ is the web app to see and query all your data in one view.
• Project admin access in AddaxAI Connect.

Use a separate Sensing Clues account for this, not your own login. AddaxAI Connect signs in as that account to post, so its password is kept on your server, and a separate account makes it clear in Sensing Clues who posted what.

How it works

1. A live image finishes classification.
2. The rules you set in AddaxAI Connect decide whether it goes through.
3. One observation is posted into your group, with the annotated photo.
4. It shows in Cluey, Focus360 and Central for every member of the group, usually within a minute.

Camera alerts work the same way: a low battery, a full SD card, silence, rejected files, or a theft watch trigger posts one observation at the camera's site.

Never sent: bulk uploads (an SD card carried in is history, not an alert), images that match no rule, and updates. Correct a species in Connect later and the observation in Sensing Clues keeps the original label.

Set up

Steps 1 and 2 are done once on the Sensing Clues side. Steps 3 and 4 are done by a project admin.

1. Make a group

On the Sensing Clues side, one time.

Make a group for the camera trap alerts in Cluey or on the Groups page in Central ↗, or pick an existing group. Every member of that group sees the observations, so choose the audience with that in mind.

2. Make an account for AddaxAI Connect

On the Sensing Clues side, one time.

Make a Sensing Clues account for AddaxAI Connect to post with, and invite it into the group on the Group members page in Central ↗, the same way you invite a colleague. Use a separate account, not your own login, so your password stays out of it and Sensing Clues shows clearly who posted. The account name has to be unique across all of Sensing Clues, so build it from your organisation and project, for example wwf-nl-serengeti-addaxai-connect.

3. Connect the project

By a project admin.

1. In AddaxAI Connect, open Integrations > Sensing Clues and click Connect. Log in with the username and password of the account from step 2. The Sensing Clues address is set once on the server, so you do not enter it here.

1. Pick your group. After you log in, the groups that account can post into appear in a dropdown. Choose the one for these alerts and click Save. If the list is empty, the account is not a member of any group yet; invite it on the Group members page in Central ↗ and log in again.

1. If the username or password is wrong, a message tells you it could not sign in and you stay on the login step, so you can correct it and try again.

2. Click Send test observation. It posts a real observation titled "Test from AddaxAI Connect" at the centre of your project area or your first site. Check that it appears in the group, so you have seen one arrive before the first real alert.

To change the group later, click Change connection and log in again. The password is never shown, so you enter it again even when you only change the group.

4. Choose what to send

In AddaxAI Connect, by a project admin.

A connected project starts with one detection rule already in place. It posts every label above the project's thresholds, all species and also people and vehicles, at all sites, with the project's independence interval as cooldown. So detections flow from the moment you connect. Camera and theft watch observations start off. Narrow or pause that default rule, or add camera and theft watch rules, in the lists below. If no rule is active, the page says so under the connection.

The same page has three rule lists.

• Detection rules: which labels (leave the labels empty for all species, which is what the default rule does), at which sites, at what time of day, minimum group size, cooldown, and an "absent for days" filter for rare visitors. The cooldown starts at the project's independence interval.
• Camera rules: battery below, SD card above, silent for more than, rejected files per day. Once per incident.
• Theft watch rules: a person unusually close to a camera, or a camera silent longer than its own rhythm.

These rules belong to the project, not to you. Any project admin can change them, and they send to the whole group. Your personal email and Telegram rules on the Notifications page are separate.

What an observation contains

Field	Animal detection	Person or vehicle	Camera alert
Kind	Animal sighting, detection	Human activity, detection	Point of interest, note
Headline	"Red fox at Site 4"	"Person at Site 4" or "Vehicle at Site 4"	The alert text, for example "CAM-012 with battery below 20%: 12%"
Time	Capture time of the image, in the server timezone	Same	Time of the check
Location	The image's GPS, or the site	Same	The camera's current site
Details	species, scientific name, count, confidence, classifier, camera, site, link to the image	activity "Person in camera", transport "On Foot" or "Vehicle ns", count, camera, site, link to the image	the trigger name (battery_low, sd_full, camera_silent, rejections, theft_watch_person, theft_watch_silence), camera, site, link to the cameras page
Attachment	The annotated image, about 800 px, with boxes and the project's privacy blur	Same	None

When something does not arrive

• Logging in says it could not sign in: the username or the password is wrong. Check them by signing in at Central ↗, and mind that a pasted password can carry a space.
• The group list stays empty: the account is not a member of any group. Invite it into one on the Group members page in Central ↗, the same way you invite a colleague, then open the connect window again.
• Observations stop after a while: the connection shows the last error. A camera without a site or GPS cannot be placed on a map, so its alerts are skipped and logged. A changed password on the Sensing Clues side also stops delivery until you connect again.
• Nothing sends at all: check that an account is connected and that at least one rule is active, the default rule may have been paused or deleted; the page shows a note when either is missing. Disconnect forgets the account and the group; the rules stay and resume when an account is connected again.