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discussion / Acoustics  / 29 September 2025

Solar edge-AI forest watcher (prototype)

Samuel Alexander

Samuel Alexander

I help companies fast-track ideas into tangible prototypes, delivering CAD designs, PCB layouts, firmware code, and thorough documentation.
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I’ve built a small, solar node that listens for chainsaws/vehicles/gunshots, snaps one photo on a confirmed event, logs to microSD, and sends a tiny alert over Wi-Fi. It runs fully on-device and mounts to a tree with a simple printed case. This project will be posted on Hackster.io for the Edge AI Earth Guardians contest.

If you have field deployment experience I’d love your wisdom on three things:

  1. What are ways you've used for cutting wind/bird noise without losing useful signals?
  2. Does a photo after an audio event detection add value?
  3. If one more sensor (or dashboard info) could be added, what add-on sensor would you pick first?


Christos Astaras
@astaras
Wildlife researcher
Commenter level 1

3 October 2025 12:39pm

Hello Samuel,

First of all, all the best of success with the Edge AI Earth Guardians contest.

Based on my experience with using PAM for poaching/hunting pressure monitoring, a photo would not be really useful - unless you have a very specific setting (which I can't think of right now). The strength of PAM is that you do not need to have line of sight to detect a sound event (unlike with camera traps). Now, if you were detecting vehicle sounds, and you had the camera at a road bent, then yes, in principle, a sound + image could be useful (but then again...the sound will trigger the sensor long before the car/truck appears in the field of view of the camera....).

My concern with real-time AI is how to eliminate false positive triggering (esp. with gunshots sounds). Unless this is resolved, I would be skeptical about the use of similar solutions (and we have tried something similar in the field). 

Finally, another concern is the way of data transmission - here you are using WiFi. So this is to be used at a homestead - farm setting, and not really at a remote forest, which is where we most need early warning systems.

Best regards, Christos