We are back in Panama after a fantastic meet up in Denmark with lots of folks doing automated insect monitoring! It went really good, and folks are really opening up, and we are working on standardizing stuff well!
 Pre-Pre-OrdersAre you interested in BUYING A MOTHBOX? Or maybe just buying some Mothbeams (the bright insect attracting lights?). Maybe you would just want a kit, or just the electronics board?  We aren't taking orders yet, we aren't even taking pre-orders, but we would like to gauge interest! So if you think you or your lab might want to buy 1 mothbox or 100 in the future (like ideally next year), please fill out our quick little form and you will be some of the first we prioritize. Send pics of your mothbox!Did you build one? Always love seeing people's builds!
Current Timeline

It's an exciting project, and you can tell how excited we and many folks are, because we have a pretty aggresive timeline coming up! But stuff all seems on track! Here's the breakdown of what we are aiming for this year so you know where we are heading!

October: Developing new custom 3d printed enclosure and testing latest PCB design

October 30 - Open Science Shop Meeting
Folks who want to be distributed manufacturers for the mothbox around the world are showing up here to discuss latest updates! If you want to join this group of potential mothbox manufacturers, let us know!

Nov: Our amazing colleagues are starting their PhDs!

Bri Johns will be starting her PhD working with the Mothbox at Monash University in Melbourn, Australia with Dr. Shawan Chdury
In Australia, Bri will also be working with https://sciencemate.com.au/ - an open source science tool producer!

Hubert will be starting his PhD with Alexandre Antonelli, Daniel Zuleta, and Daisy Dent at
University of Gothenburg

Nov 9-11 Entomology Society Meeting: Portland Oregon
We will be talking about the mothbox and aim to start taking pre-pre-orders for people who want to buy them from the Open Science Shop

Nov 15-18 - Visiting Seattle! (I technically work there!)

December - Finalizing prototypes
We will be doing lots of tests with the latest mothbox v5.
This includes the custom PCB and the custom printed box
 

• Wild labs conservation technology conference - Peru - February 18-20 (We areputting together a panel with Tom August about automated insect monitors) (We are also probably going to try to put together a pre-workshop feb 16-17 where we will go out and test insect monitors in the field and work with the data!)
  
  March 2-10 - In Barcelona Teaching Interaction Design at BAU (We might do a mothbox workshop after this nearby in spain)
  
  May 16 - Moth Madness
  We are running a capstone event for our Wildlabs grant. We will see how many mothboxes can we get documenting biodiversity around the world in one night!
  
  (~~~~Approximate Below ~~~~~~~)

• April/May - Likely will have a workshop at Nadya Peek's Lab at UW Seattle - Pathways to Open Science Ecosystems symposium
• May 23rd & 24th, 2026 Open Hardware Summit -  Berlin! 2026.oshwa.org/

• Week of June 8   - Build Mothbox Workshops with American Museum of Natural History (Upstate New York)

• July 17-19 - Mothapalooza - Eastern Ohio  (You should come if you can make it! It should be really fun!)

• July 21-25 - Moth Week! - New York City Central Park and American Museum of Natural History

 Designing a Custom Mothbox BoxThe previous version of the mothbox was optimized for getting a device together as quick as possible with robust, off-the-shelf parts. For this version we were using the Plano 1360 poly-carbonate box. It's a terrific box, rugged, clear (we even tested its UV clarity with our spectrophotometer), and pretty darn weather proof (we even sent it to a coral reef for a day!).

The main downside though is that the process for making this box doesn't scale well for mass manufacturing. You gotta buy these boxes, get them shipped to you, unbox em, drill a hole, epoxy a camera lens adapter on.

So in the theme of making this thing much easier to produce and much more widely available for people around the world, we have decided to try to make a 3d printable box!


3D printed boxes have some cool upsides

• Flexible design, can accommodate smaller or larger mothbox models 

We are actually thinking of making 2 versions, A) Mothbox Original- for people who want a standalone mothbox with 1-2 batteries in its box, and B) Mothbox Thin - for folks who want to only use an external power supply (e.g. big 100ah truck battery), that does not have an internal battery. So that Mothbox's box will be about twice as thin.

• can be made cheaply
• can be made for more efficient, robust transport (packable, stackable designs)
• can use different materials for different places (needs in Europe might be different than the rainforest)
• can be potentially turned into injection molded designs if needing a LOT
• logistics material density: store-bought boxes can be hard to ship places because they are so bulky. instead of buying 20 boxes and having to ship that somewhere remote, you could take a 3d printer and filament on the plane and print the boxes in your destination
• distributed manufacturing is much easier- lots of places can 3d print stuff for you

3D printing boxes has some downsides though for a weatherproof box

• The layers making up every print are potentially porous
• Some materials absorb moisture
• Could be a time suck at mega scales (On a fancy new 3d printer, i can print a whole mothbox in about 12 hours)

(Here's an example of an earlier 3d printed design after one rainstorm in gamboa. Nice and juicy!)

Making the thing

• water resistant,
• yet still clear enough to shine big photographic lights,
• while also still ultra-clear enough near the camera to take crystal clear photos
• and also easy to print and manufacture (i.e. no tricky coatings)

is a really tricky problem!
I have been going into a manic mode going through lots of ideas and protoypes. Alex and Patrice have been sharing some cool ideas about waterproofing and modularity that have been helpful!

But we have been having some success! 

Here's images of the current design:





You can see the orange TPU 3d printed rubber gasket above


Images have been looking very clear and shadowless!

Thoughts going into the design:

• Multi-shell design  - like the Titanic (hahahahha) we are designing around multiple hulls. There's a 3 layer design on the shell protecting the inside from the elements. This helps guard against printing defects that might permit some water because any ingressing water will meet an empty space before it makes it to the next layer. This also gives us decent strength for how light it is. Hopefully unlike the Titanic, we won't let hubris drive the mothbox into any icebergs!
• water-flowing design - it's not designed to be submerged, but rather keep water away from electronics! Inside these hulls we angle everything so any water that does get it is actually channeled away from the electronics by gravity and excreted through the bottom.
• breathable - the above considerations also means this helps make this box breathable. This is good because when it is running, the mothbox is generally a good amount hotter than the ambient surroundings because of its bright lights.
• Lightweight - we are printing with PETG-Carbon fiber, which has frankly been pretty awesome to work with. It's a pretty cheap filament (i have been getting it for $18usd a kilo), and it is very strong yet quite lightweight!
• clear where needed - we laser cut the front panel from clear PMMA, and it has been taking lovely clear pictures through it.
• Heat- reducing - the Carbon fiber has a bonus ability! It might actually act a bit like a radiator! So when the box heats up, it can help move some of that heat away from the electronics as well!

I did a quick and dirty experiment with some really bright and hot mothbeams on some 3d printed lids from the prototypes, one from ABS and one PETG + 15% CF
The carbon fiber one (right) cooled a little bit quicker and was about 7 degrees C cooler during the cool down period. While they were both on full blast, i did not notice much of a difference, both seemed saturated with heat. Also apparently if I really wanted to be a carbon fiber printing pro, i would use ABS CF or PET CF, but the PETG cf is about half as expensive, and seems ok so far (but those can be an option)

• Simple to put together - after all the parts are printed. I was able to go from a kit of parts to a functioning mothbox in under 30 minutes! I am designing to use as few weird unique materials. Everything just gets screwed together or 1/4in (or m6) bolts connect the rest.
• Repairable - no parts are permanently attached so if a part breaks, you can replace it (even in the field!)
• Reproducible: our new 3d printer has a really big build area (340x320x340), but we are designing the boxes to have max dimensions of 256mm so that people with other smaller printers under this common size should be able to print it as well.
• Parts are easy to transport. There are protective lids over the front acrylic to stop optical damage. The boxes are designed to have flat surfaces on their backs and fronts so they stack compactly in luggage.

Post Processing SoftwareThanks to the incredible help from Bernat Fourtet from https://restorationscope.com/ we have been rocking our post processing workflow. Bernat is a really talented UI designer and making a labeling system that lets humans pore over the data super fast. It's also quite fun to look through the data in these organized ways! We were discussing maybe having a little virtual post-processing workshop sometime where Hubert can show his workflow for going through data. Let us know if you are interested!


 Electronics DevelopmentWe just got our 4th iteration of the Mothbox PCB (the main electronics board), yesterday, and it just kinda works! Paul Hamilton and I have been rapidly optimizing this really complex thing, and the work has been paying off!
There's now also built-in temperature and light sensors, little switches to physically program your mothbox's schedule, even MORE photographic LEDs up front! We got a couple minor tweaks (change some labels, beefier fuse), but in general, It's going great!