Southeastern Reptile Conservation
AI monitoring
for turtle
rehabilitation.
turtle-ai is free, open-source software that watches your RTSP camera feeds around the clock, uses a local AI model to detect signs of distress, and sends you an alert — without sending a single image to the cloud.
Eastern box turtle — Hampton Roads, Virginia
How it works
From cameras to alert in four steps.
01
Set up cameras
Point any RTSP-enabled IP camera at your turtle habitats.
02
Pull the model
Install Ollama and pull gemma4:e4b — runs on most modern hardware.
03
Configure & run
Fill in a single config file with your camera URLs and Twilio credentials, then docker compose up.
04
Get alerted
turtle-ai monitors around the clock and texts you the moment something is wrong.
Because the AI runs entirely on local hardware, no images are ever transmitted to a remote datacenter, and there are no API tokens to purchase or renew. For small nonprofits, that means no ongoing cost and no usage limits. The system runs as long as your hardware does.
What the AI monitors
A local Gemma 4 model analyzes each camera frame and flags these distress indicators. When one is detected, a Twilio alert fires within seconds.
- Carapace-up positioning
- Entrapment
- Unusual inactivity
- Aggressive interactions
- Eggs present
📷
RTSP Camera Integration
Connect any RTSP-enabled IP camera. Supports multiple cameras per installation — no proprietary hardware required.
🧠
Local AI, Full Privacy
Runs entirely on your hardware using Ollama. No images ever leave your facility or touch a cloud server.
📱
Instant Distress Alerts
Twilio SMS and WhatsApp notifications the moment a turtle shows signs of distress — day or night.
🔌
Open API
A push-based API lets dashboards, agents, and other tools receive live scan results automatically.
About SERC
Protecting native species
in Hampton Roads, Virginia
Southeastern Reptile Conservation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit providing permitted wildlife rehabilitation for native reptiles and amphibians. turtle-ai was built to help SERC — and organizations like it — monitor animals around the clock without additional staffing.
Free and open source
turtle-ai is MIT licensed and free to use. The SERC team can help your organization get set up.
🐢 Powered by Southeastern Reptile Conservation — a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in Hampton Roads, Virginia