Hello - I am an animal behavior researcher and am performing experiments where I film animals completing different behavioral tasks within a laboratory arena. Usually I need to record animals for specified periods of trial time - 10 minutes, 5 minutes, etc. for later behavioral analysis.

In the past I have used manual cameras, where we start and stop the camera, extract video, and save as needed. Often the video needs to be cut down later due to manual start/stop. This can be time consuming, and introduce sources of error since we are usually manually labeling videos and manually transferring them.

I have been thinking of setting up a system in my lab where video is recorded for a specified period of time and videos are output and saved with important metadata in the file names. I have been looking into systems that utilize Raspberry Pi with camera attachments, or using webcams with some sort of capture software. I don't have a good grasp on how much work this will take, or if it is worth it for my application. Does anyone have a system like this, or have resources they could point me to? Or does this seem like too much work for a relatively simple application? Curious what you think!