discussion / Acoustics  / 16 April 2017

Group purchase of the AudioMoth from Open Acoustic Devices imminent

Hi everyone,

It has become apparent that a number of us (ZSL / Institute of Zoology / UCL / NGOs / independent PhD students etc...) each need about 50 - 100 AudioMoths for personal studies or wide scale monitoring.

The designs will shortly be available on GitHub (once Alex Rogers and his team release them in a few weeks time). Once available, the standard route is to use Circuit Hub to have them produced. The higher the quantity, the cheaper the bill of materials (BOM) will be, and hence, the cheaper the end device for you.

We thought we'd post a thread to see if any WILDLABS community members also want to bulk buy with us. We're currently on about 800 - 1000 in quantity and plan to place an order in June.

I'm also exploring the development of a tool that will allow Alex (or other open developers) to have a user defined portion of each device (£1 for example) sent back to the creator to help maintain firmware / updates. This financial reinvestment is often ignored and excellent open designs can fall victim to a lack of investment simply to fix bugs and ensure there is capacity to respond to questions and continue to contribute to the success of the device. I'll share my thoughts here shortly, but for now, if you need an AudioMoth please feel free to comment below and we'll include you in the purchase to get you a cheaper device.

Kind regards,

Alasdair




Hi Rachael,

I can share a quick update that we have about ~400 units split between 15 people at the moment. The order ETA is still late July, but we'll meet with Alex and the AudioMoth team next week and provide an update for you all. Estimated costs are between £30 - £40.

Also, the newer device in this purchase supports AA batteries compared to AAA so you'll all get a little more power in the field using the default device (higher capacity compared to AAA).

Kind regards,

Alasdair

Hi Alasdair,

Do you still have AudioMoth available for the firts order and if yes, when will you place the order? Thanks.

Cheers,
Diogo