We met so many wonderful folks during our trip to the Entomological Society and other visits in the US! Here's some last updates of the year!

Online Open Hours - Thursday 18 1pm UTC-5

I realized, before the year wraps up, many of you might want to hear about what we are up to to help plan your work in 2026!

So, on Thursday the 18th at 1-2pm UTC-5, I'll be online at

https://meet.jit.si/mothbox

And you can just pop in and ask me any questions you want!
Ask me about tips for building, tips for going through your data, whatever you want! 

New Mothbox Field Test Success!

The Smithsonian bat lab has been using mothboxes here in Panama to survey what kinds of bugs their bats might eat! They just finished up a rigorous trial to help us test out the newest 3D-printable enclosure and the latest PCB. For about 5 weeks now, they have been deploying them in the jungle during the absolute rainiest part of the year, and guess what? the Mothboxes thrived!

I had been concerned about leakage of these 3D printed boxes, but it seems like our designs have been working out! They stayed just as dry as the off-the-shelf boxes we have been using for years now! So yay! 

We will be getting the proof versions of the PCB into Panama soon, and hopefully move forward with even more manufacturing!

Pre-Pre-Order a Mothbox

In January we aim to start being able to take pre-orders of the Mothbox with the Openscienceshop.org network helping do distributed manufacturing around the world. To help us gauge interest for how many mothboxes people might want where (and if they want kits or fully assembled parts). There are already about 70 mothboxes on our docket to get made next year, but the interest we get will inform our strategies for getting them out to people as soon as possible!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfi9uZ_ZCyryR8PCAIEaGi_4bSr2cWwznUFDQ-H5Bb0zSpnWg/viewform?usp=header

Send pics of your mothbox!

Did you build one? Always love seeing people's builds!

Current Timeline

• 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
 

• February - Wild labs conservation technology conference - Peru - February 16-20 We have a pre-conference workshop and a session accepted about automated moth monitoring. If you want to do some real-world testing at an amazing conference, come join us!
• March 2-10 - In Barcelona Teaching Interaction Design at BAU (We might do a mothbox workshop after this nearby in southern spain, anyone want to do mothbox stuff then?)
• March 15-April 15 - working in Panama! (Also it will be my birthday!)
• April 15-16- Imageomics Lab Ohio - Imageomics All hands meeting (I'll be showing folks how to build mothboxes!)
• April 22-24 -  Nadya Peek's Lab at UW Seattle - Pathways to Open Science Ecosystems symposium
• May - Seattle area - We will likely be hanging around the Pacific Northwest a bit as a homebase, May-August 2026. Maybe you can hire us to do a workshop near you?!
• May 16 - Moth Madness (everywhere in the world at once!)
  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!
• 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) - We will be doing a free workshop to show people how to put together their mothboxes and use them to kick off the field season!

• 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 - we will be doing a big outreach project using mothboxes and celebrating moths with the public in central park! (Anyone got Zohran's contact, we can invite him and tell him how cool moths are!)
   
• August TDB - Likely giving a talk in Arizona! More details soon!

 Questions?! Use the Github!

Report problems or leave questions on the github for the mothbox to make sure we get back to you!
https://github.com/Digital-Naturalism-Laboratories/Mothbox/issues