My name is Erik, and I started using trail cameras at the end of 2020. What began as a simple curiosity soon became one of my main hobbies.

Over time, I became increasingly interested not only in recording wildlife, but also in understanding the data behind these records. I am now developing a free tool that uses the official iNaturalist API to create visual reports and metrics from trail camera records, helping people better understand wildlife activity in specific regions.

Hi All!

I’m Frank Short, a PhD candidate at Boston University, and I’m excited to be joining the WILDLABS team as a WWF intern this summer! I wanted to introduce my background a bit and what I will be working on throughout the internship.

I was lucky enough to be exposed to advanced conservation technology approaches early on in my academic career, as my undergraduate honors thesis at Rutgers University focused on using movement ecology to investigate Bornean orangutan male mating strategies in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Moving forward to my PhD program at Boston University I was inspired by my experiences in using publicly available acoustic machine learning tools like BirdNET while birding to apply this approach to Bornean orangutan conservation. To that end, as a part of my research I’ve created custom classifiers for the acoustic detection of several threatened primate species in the rainforests of West Kalimantan, Indonesia. In my journey of trying to find my footing in the conservation technology sphere I was inspired by WILDLABS’ platform and mission to provide resources and connections for conservation researchers and stakeholders.

This summer, I’ll be supporting WILDLABS across a few areas. I’ll be working on the refinement of a database regarding the WILDLABS Awards and The Boring Fund and doing some analysis and evaluation of these funding programs to better understand project reach, outcomes, and impact. The end goal is to identify gaps and trends in the needs of the conservation technology community that WILDLABS can work to address moving forward. I’ll also be using my background in movement ecology and passive acoustic monitoring to further develop The Inventory resources page and streamline its use potential for conservation practitioners to search for and employ the tools that best suit their study systems and project scope. Finally, I’m looking forward to supporting community learning and engagement in a variety of ways including adding to WILDLABS showcases and events.

I’m excited to be a part of and contribute to such an amazing and innovative community (and hopefully accumulate some badges along the way)!

-Frank

Good evening, everyone!

My name is Connor Sapp, I am entering my final year of undergraduate studies at the University of Central Florida this Fall.  I am pursuing a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, with minor studies in Bioinformatics and Genomics, as well as Data Science.  I found this community when I began looking online for ways to build a career that incorporated both my fascinations with the power of technology and the wonders of the natural world.

In the past year, I have begun volunteering at my university's arthropod collection, where I got the opportunity to learn lots about the different orders of insects and some of the families within them.  As a volunteer, I've gotten to do work indoors behind a microscope, but also out in the field gathering insects at specific areas to further develop the collection, which is where I started to really fall in love with nature.  Some of the most fun I've had in college has been sucking up bugs and sweeping my net with friends.

This summer, I got hired as an intern at my school's natural lands organization, which we call the UCF Arboretum, and I've been able to gain even more exposure to the field of conservation by seeing the projects various teams work on; everything from public garden management to stormwater to natural resources.  I am currently working on a project assisting the natural resources team, building a computer vision algorithm to strengthen their wildlife camera traps.  My pipeline will assist with detecting and filtering out blank footage and provide some level of classification for wildlife that appear.

My goal in joining this discussion forum is to learn more about the unique efforts of people who contribute their time and energy towards conservation; and to learn about how my technical skillset can be used to contribute as well.

Hi, are you looking to import these? Do you have any import tax considerations? This could impact which models you buy. I have been using Acorn models, very reliable and provide photo and 4K video with sound options.

Best wishes

Susan

Hi Garin

We have a well-engineered and proven system for aerial VHF tracking of animals. The Multi-Track system can be attached to a drone or piloted aircraft. It can track 500 frequencies simultaneously, and does not require triangulation, or manual drone flying. 

For more info, and to get in touch, please see our website:

https://altitudeconservation.com/ 

Good luck with your fieldwork!

Chris

Hey Garin, how are you?

you should contact https://wildlifedrones.net/ they have rented the equipment (payload and drones) in the past to track pangolins, bats and many other species. But I've heard the they are closing bussiness since Trump's budget cut in the USA since this country was their first client. But I think that they may help you out getting in touch with you with the researchers.

My tech advices are, what's the species? weight? attachment method? how long do you want to track? you should use the higher LOS of the transmitter, 40 Km LOS (Line of Sight) is the higher and since you are interested in tracking fossorial species, the LOS will be affected by the obstacles (ground density, forest density, topography etc), so the LOS will be like 5% up to 10% in the field, its about 200 mt up to 4 Km

Also try contact 

https://www.apicalis.com/

If you are trying building up your payload and drone here's a link that may help you out

https://uavrt.nau.edu/

https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-210X.13261

Hi Jérémy,

I'm the developer of the UAV-RT system. We haven't updated our website in a long time and have made some significant progress. I've got a student making updates right now. 

We've recently deployed the system in the UK on pine martens, with painted dogs in Zimbabwe, and tracking kiwi in New Zealand. Our recent deployments are showing detections far beyond ground telemetry.  I'm actively looking for some more fieldwork opportunities for the coming year and have travel money left on my grant. Feel free to shoot me an email at [email protected]. 

Have drone. Will travel. 

-Michael

looking forward to this discussions too. Exploring the use of sparrow and in case our use case succeeds, we'll share feedback too.

Ok

The process begins 😂

Wow, what a great project.

Great guide — this is exactly the kind of resource the community needs. A few additions from a hardware embedded perspective that might be worth including:

On PIR sensors — the standard Fresnel lens + PIR combination has a fundamental limitation in hot environments: when ambient temperature approaches body temperature (~35°C in African savannah), the thermal contrast between the animal and the background drops dramatically and trigger reliability degrades. This is worth calling out explicitly for tropical and arid deployments, where the standard PIR may miss animals during the hottest part of the day. Some teams have moved to passive radar (Doppler microwave) as an alternative trigger for hot environments — less species-selective but more temperature-independent.

On power architecture — one thing I'd add to the component deep-dive is the power switching circuit. Most commercial cameras use a simple battery holder with no protection. For DIY builds, a proper battery management IC with overcurrent protection, low-voltage cutoff, and reverse polarity protection adds almost no cost but prevents a lot of field failures, especially when using lithium primaries in extreme temperatures.

On IR illumination — the choice between 850nm (faint red glow, better image quality) and 940nm (truly invisible, lower image quality, shorter range) is well covered in most guides, but what's often missed is thermal management of the IR LEDs themselves. High-power IR LEDs run hot and can significantly raise the enclosure temperature in a sealed housing — worth mentioning as a factor in enclosure thermal design, particularly for cameras that run night-long video.

On the shift away from hardware — curious what drove that decision. Was it the enclosure/thermal challenges, the PIR reliability issue, or something else entirely?

Thank you for sharing.

HI

This what I am trying currently todo

https://wildlabs.net/en/discussion/looking-collaborators-ai-powered-backyard-bee-monitor-citizen-science?language_content_entity=en

I have already some algorithms and some monitoring set up in development

feel free to reach me maybe we could join forces

Hi Barbara. 

If you are able to power the Audiomoth externally from a lithium-ion source, the lithium-ion batteries can be used down to -20 deg C. They can't be charged below 0 deg C though so if you were thinking of a solar charging setup as well, then you'd need to look at the temperature range you're planning to use them in. 

In regards to the battery life for continuous recording, I found this information from here:
 

The recording lifespan of the AudioMoth on one set of batteries has previously been measured only for a subset of the possible configuration settings. Hill et al. reported the battery life of the AudioMoth using 3000 mAh lithium batteries for some common configurations [15], reporting that an AudioMoth could record for 115 days recording at 8 kHz, the lowest sample rate, for 30 s every 5 min. The developers also reported the AudioMoth lasted 9 days recording nonstop at a 48 kHz sample rate. While the AudioMoth configuration app provides estimates of battery life for any chosen configuration settings, these estimates have not to our knowledge been validated empirically.

Even derating the battery life by a factor of 2 due to cold temperature conditions would seem to get you over the finish line. One experiment you can try is to record continuously in a refrigerator and look at the recording duration. Typical refrigerators are around 2 deg C which could approximate conditions you mentioned. 

If you will be using stock Audiomoths with no modification for rechargeable batteries, then I'd recommend using Energizer Lithium AA batteries which have some of the highest battery capacities for disposable batteries. Those are airplane safe if they go in your carry-on luggage. 

Hope that helps.

Akiba

I am glad to see more programmers coming into the conservation field.  The first big project I did that really got me involved with conservation work, was taking the path finding algorithms I used from learning game programming, and using them to detect and measure the distance of routes that turtles traveled up and down streams in a river drainage.  

Wolves, cool!

Will this then need collared wolves ?

Hi Kristof!

It's been quite some time since you made this post, and I hope you're doing well.

I'm an environmental scientist currently working on a project to teach children living near a national park the basics of game development through conservation science focused on the biodiversity of the atlantic forest. I came across your post and thought it would be wonderful to chat with you, if you're still available and interested.

Let me know—I’d love to hear from you!

Hello everyone,

My name is Manijhé, and I’m currently developing an independent field-based project called Kyosei Earth. The design is in response to the need for a global conservation community platform first to residencies/labs.

Starting with a very basic ecology studio via www.manijhe.art

I’m working from a low-infrastructure environment, where access to tools, electricity, and stable internet is limited. Rather than treating this as a barrier, I’ve been exploring how ecological practice can begin under these conditions — using observation, local knowledge, and small-scale systems.

My work sits at the intersection of:
• conservation ecology  
• ethnobotany and field observation  
• community-based systems  
• and what I am exploring as sumbiocracy — a form of commons governance grounded in ecological relationships  

I’ve recently started documenting this through the Kyosei Earth Journal, beginning with a first issue that focuses on perception, household ecology, and early-stage system design.

Alongside this, I’m also developing small-scale lab and living space designs that explore how forest communities might integrate:
– food systems  
– low-waste material cycles  
– and shared ecological responsibility  

I’m particularly interested in learning from this community, especially around:
• conservation in low-resource environments  
• tools that function with minimal infrastructure  
• community-led ecological monitoring  
• and long-term forest stewardship models  

I’m here to listen, learn, and contribute where I can.

While I am developing concepts around designing for conservation, here is an example design I would like to share for what I think my current research region (Hunza, Gilgit Baltistan) could truly benefit from at phase two. At phase one, I am building a community around my ecology studio to develop a global conservation platform first. Happy to discuss more ideas with potential collaborators who feel aligned with this way of thinking.

Thank you — I’m looking forward to the conversations here.

Hi everyone, I’m Collin. I’m a software engineer in the Atlanta area, and over the past year I’ve been building ecokeeper, a native habitat and garden-planning app focused on helping people understand their garden conditions and make more thoughtful planting decisions.

Most of my experience is in full-stack and mobile development, but my personal interests have been pulling me more and more toward native plants, ecological restoration, biodiversity, geospatial tools, and conservation technology. I’m here because I’d like to learn from people already working in this space and better understand where my technical background could be useful.

For this group, I’m hoping to connect with others who are early in the field, changing directions, or figuring out how to bring software, ecology, and real-world conservation work closer together.

Hello,

I am Athira, and I am currently finishing up my PhD work on Human-Wild boar conflict in India. I have my Bachelors and Masters in Zoology.

I am excited to learn more about the broad areas of wildlife management practices to improve coexistence, developing scientific study-backed wildlife governance policies, stakeholder management for coexistence and conservation.

Now what brought me here was, I was searching for career options for after my PhD and stumbled upon the Wildlabs. I am finding the discussions and the feed here encouraging for anyone interested in the environment/wildlife conservation field. Such a forum for the intersection of technology and nature component is so cool and solution oriented. I hope to learn more about different innovative technologies and also not to miss out on the latest events, job opportunities and discussions on cutting edge research. 

We had this same issue, and found that the firmware version 1.9.2 was our issue. We bumped it back to 1.9.0 and our energy consumption was back to normal. 

We record data for 7 hours a day (3.5 hour blocks), using sandisk extreme 64GB micro SD cards. We don’t use re-chargeable batteries, and the ARUs are set for 14-day periods before being collected. With the 1.9.2 firmware, for some reason they’d only record for maybe 9 days tops before dying. At firmware 1.9.0, we were back to our normal recording of minimum 14 days (although they often last longer). We tried different batteries, different energy saving settings, nothing worked besides bumping the firmware down. This issue was in both our brand new AudioMoths and 2-year old AudioMoths. 
 

I hope this helps.