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Acoustics / Feed

Acoustic is one of our biggest and most active groups, with members collecting, analysing, and interpreting acoustic data from across species, ecosystems, and applications, from animal vocalizations to sounds from our natural and built environment.

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discussion

Safe and Sound project report: Is Camtrap DP a suitable standard for (bio)acoustic data?

Julia Wiel

18 March 2026 4:17pm

Dear WILDLABS community,We are pleased to share with you the publication of the Safe and Sound project report: Is Camtrap DP a suitable...

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Kristoffer Noriel Ordoñez

12 April 2026 6:19pm

Your report on extending Camtrap DP to bioacoustics resonated with something we are just beginning to explore in Mindoro Island, Philippines.

We have ongoing camera trap deployments in interior forest habitats and are beginning to examine the acoustic layer embedded in those recordings, particularly for nocturnal species such as the Mindoro Boobook. The discussion around terminology and how datasets are structured feels especially relevant, though I am still trying to understand how frameworks like Camtrap DP would apply in practice to this kind of data.

It is encouraging to see this direction being shaped at the community level. I will be following this closely as we continue to learn and figure out how our own datasets might eventually align.

Catherine Jardine

15 June 2026 11:54pm

Thanks for this!  I've shared this post with the WildTrax (https://wildtrax.ca/) team and CanAvian (https://canavian.ca/) to investigate. We're exploring data standards as part of a recent initiative so this will be very helpful! @jeffcullis 

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discussion

List of bioacoustics software

Tessa Rhinehart

1 July 2020 3:23pm

Edit: Since posting this over 4 years ago, we've moved it to its own GitHub repository and associated website. If you have any suggestions for software...

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Liz Ferguson

13 June 2026 4:56pm

Hi Tessa, thanks so much for the update!!! I love that there is an interactive website now. This is such a valuable website, I'm happy to see the updates ;) - Liz

Kim Hendrikse

15 June 2026 9:00am

Actually, on the subject of acoustics, the Raspberry Pi based sound localization system I developed has been running continuously since 2023 writing to a 256GB SD card :-)
 

https://github.com/hcfman/sbts-aru

I submitted it for addition to that list a few years ago. Should be there also I guess.

I have three of these running around my house. Off power though because I can. Actually I use one of them as a time server for all my computer equipment because it maintains microsecond time accuracy continuously.

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discussion

🐸 WILDLABS Awards 2025: Open-Source Solutions for Amphibian Monitoring: Adapting Autonomous Recording Devices (ARDs) and AI-Based Detection in Patagonia

Marcelo Bonino

27 May 2025 8:39pm

We’re excited to launch our WILDLABS-funded project to adapt open-source recording hardware and AI tools to help monitor amphibians, with an initial focus on one of South America'...

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Marcelo Bonino

12 November 2025 7:36pm

🌿 Project Update — November 2025
Sharing our experience at the Symposium on Physics Applied to Ecology and Conservation (Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil).

We’d like to thank Carlos Araujo for kindly inviting us to take part in the Symposium on Physics Applied to Ecology and Conservation, held on November 6–7, 2025, at the PTI Campus – Universidade Federal da Integração Latino-Americana (UNILA) in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil.

The event aimed to build bridges between researchers from different disciplines and countries, exploring how physics can support acoustic monitoring, ecological data collection, and biodiversity conservation.

🎙️ We joined Roundtable 3 — Hardware, Sensors, and Audio Recording, where we discussed:

Open-source autonomous recorders for biodiversity monitoring.

Energy-efficient design and sensor integration.

Alternative battery types and power solutions (particularly relevant to our developments)


🎥 Watch the roundtable recording here.


It was also a great opportunity to share our experience and highlight the WildLabs community, connecting with colleagues working at the intersection of physics, ecology, and technology.

 

 


 

 

Marcelo Bonino

9 June 2026 3:36pm

Hi everyone!

Following up on our project development, we have just published the full report on our work integrating environmental monitoring into AudioMoth devices and the resulting BirdNET workflows for Patagonian amphibians. You can find the complete documentation and results here.

Beyond the technical implementation, we’ve documented the custom firmware, the AI training pipeline for our species, and the practical challenges we faced during field deployments:

Project Video: YouTube Video Link

Firmware: AudioMoth I2C Firmware Repository (GitLab)

AI Workflow: BirdNET-based Workflow for Amphibians (GitHub)

Edge Models: TinyFrog Repository (GitHub)

PyTorch reimplementation: BirdNET-Analyzer (GitHub)

If you are working on similar setups or have questions about the hardware or the workflow, feel free to reach out. I hope this documentation proves useful for your own research.

Thanks for the support and the exchange of ideas during these months!

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careers

Biodiversity Monitoring Scientist

Tom August

8 June 2026 5:22pm

This role would suit someone with a background in ecology or environmental science who enjoys combining fieldwork, data analysis, and applied research to support real-world environmental outcomes.

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discussion

Spectrolipi v2.0.1

Nishant Bhagwat

8 June 2026 10:34am

Spectrolipi is a tool for visualizing sound, annotating spectrograms, and exporting ML‑ready acoustic datasets.Spectrolipi V2.0.0 is released now. Main new...

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discussion

Microphone Choices for Bird and Amphibian Bioacoustic Research

Vasilios Kosmakos

6 August 2024 12:56am

I am looking for recommendations on the microphones to conduct bird and amphibian bioacoustic research, that I am conducting in South America. My partner organization and I are...

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Kim Hendrikse

24 September 2024 3:25pm

Or you could use my sbts-aru project. Which is free software that runs on Raspberry Pis. It also allows you to perform sound localization remotely if required, without bringing the SD card back. Last night I had a listen to some calls in the jungle from Lajuma research center in South Africa that was recorded with them. @nlubcker  and I expect to do some localization tests soon from the species down there.



If your Pi is connected to a network you can do localization in near real time (less than 10 minutes manually) as you don't have to stop the recorder or post process the recordings. If you write you own pipeline you can implement real-time sound localization with it and output a URL to a google maps location.



 

My advice for microphones is the em272 microphone capsules based ones, which are very high quality microphones used as by the Swedish company Telinga in their parabolic microphones. That's what I use. They are very low noise and very sensitive. Here's a link to one, likely hard to get at your side of the world though.



 

In my testing they appeared to be similar in performance to some Rode clip microphones and similar in price. They are likely more easily obtained where you are.

Victorio Maximiliano Rocchi

3 June 2026 5:19pm

Como dijo Carly, Audiomoths y Song Meter Micro, son los que mas te recomiendo. lo unico a tener en cuenta es que para audiomoths vas a tener que comprar o armar alguna especie de cajita protectora. los de Wildlife acoustic, ya viene con protección, solo recomiendo hacer un "techo" con algun plastico. 

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discussion

Project Showcase: "Global Birdsong Radio" - A distributed edge-to-cloud acoustic sensor network using live streams

Avi

27 February 2026 1:00am

Hello everyone,I am a hobbyist software developer and nature enthusiast, and while I don’t have a background in ornithology or academic biology, I wanted to share an open-source...

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Luke Browne

18 May 2026 4:48pm

This is really impressive Avi! Would you mind sharing what kind of hardware the local ingestion + detection is running on? 

It's a fun experiment to think if this could be expanded to any live stream happening on any platform (Instagram, TikTok)

Avi

21 May 2026 12:10am

Hi Luke, 

The local hardware is just a laptop and a few SIM routers.

I guess the heart of it is the user experience, where the users can navigate their own choice of nature real time stream mosaic.

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discussion

Nature Tech Unconference - Anyone attending?

Elsa

8 March 2025 12:11pm

Hi all, anyone planning to attend the Nature Tech Unconference on 28th March at the London School of Economics Campus in London, UK? (the event is free to attend but...

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Elsa

13 May 2026 12:05pm

Myself and the Fauna & Flora Conservation Technology team will be there (@Chelsea_Smith  and @ugyenpenjor ) and also the WILDLABS team @HRees ! See you!

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discussion

Custom Hydrophone Records Dolphins

Brett Smith

23 April 2026 3:33pm

 A few years back, we began work in earnest on our DFAD recycling project in Seychelles.During the exploratory phase - we experimented with every high value use for the buoys...

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Walter Zimmer

3 May 2026 7:46am

Brett, you may reach out to @Lucille, who under the auspices of the Partnership  for Observation of the Global Ocean (POGO), the Scientific Committee of Ocean Research (SCOR), and the International Quiet Ocean Experiment (IQOE) is managing the development of LC-MARE a low cost marine acoustic recorder.  An ultra low power ADC is indeed an important component, so there may be some synergies.

Elionai

6 May 2026 3:35pm

This is really interesting — especially the part about experimenting with different high-value uses.

I’m currently working on a small edge AI project for ecosystem monitoring, and it’s made me realize how different things can look outside of controlled environments.

Out of curiosity, during those experiments, what ended up being the biggest constraint — was it more about technical feasibility, cost, or something unexpected in real-world conditions?

 

Chris Nicholas

11 May 2026 7:34pm

cool! 
When you say: "...first usable result that validates our hardware and software signal chain." can you share what those chains are? 

As for connectivity, yeah, that's a HUGE challenge ... Can you do SMS-level connectivity to Starlinks?

I presume you'd want to log basic temp/salinity, and perhaps include a basic accelerometer for wave motion over something like MQTT. 

As for pushing down bioacoustic processing to the devices, yeah, would be awesome to do some minimal envelope threshold detection, and just send back compressed versions of 'the good stuff' .  Maybe even listen for propellers and/or fishing sonar too, and send EarthRanger alerts.

And of course you'd want to do OTA updates, which in turn introduces security, etc.

Fun project!

 

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discussion

Using rechargeable lithium-ion batteries for AudioMoths and/or Swift's

Carly Batist

13 October 2021 5:32pm

Hi all, I'm wondering if anyone has experience using rechargeable lithium-ion batteries for passive acoustic devices, specifically Audiomoths (AA batteries) and Cornell...

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Alessandro Ponzo

22 April 2026 6:45am

Hi Everyone,  

I have done some testing, and it seems like there is always some background noise from the switch, but it gets really loud once it echoes inside the Underwater case. 

 

 

Please find all tests and comparisons of the XTAR CLR 4300, the XTAR 4150 and the Energizer Ultimate Lithium

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Knbfk6A11YAdYtgn9k64ka7CU8tblw8-?usp=drive_link

Let me know if you have any suggestions and any extra tests to run.

The XTAR 4150mWh Capacity 2500mAh at the highest hydromoth settings runs only for 54 hours, which is not particularly impressive. 

I also emailed XTAR for advice. 

 

Alessandro Ponzo

11 May 2026 6:56am

The XTAR CLR 4300 (2700mAh) lasted for 5 days and they still had power left, but they showed the same problem. 

I have not heard back from XTAR.

Any suggestions?

I added the files in the Gdrive folder above.

 

 

Walter Zimmer

11 May 2026 6:05pm

At this point, I would suggest:
- crosscheck with Alkaline Batteries (same sampling frequencies, same procedure)
- change sampling frequency to see if the pulse repetition frequency changes also or remains constant

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discussion

Looking for opportunities in AI for Bioacoustics and Environmental Monitoring

Leonardo Mannini

6 April 2026 10:37am

Hi everyone,My name is Leonardo Mannini, and I’m an AI engineer with a strong interest in bioacoustics and conservation technology.I recently completed a research role at FBK (...

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Brent Pease

17 April 2026 1:19pm

Hi Leonardo,


Let’s chat! I potentially have some opportunities, collaborations or even short-term employment. Send me a message. 

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discussion

What are the best Open-Source AI models for BioAcoustics?

José

12 October 2025 2:19pm

Hello! I'm very behind in the state of the art of Bioacoustics. So I wanted to ask what are the models that people and organizations are using? I'm looking for useful models...

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Carly Batist

14 October 2025 3:25pm

Hi José,

BirdNET is one of the most common ones! The model is open, or there are also no-code interfaces that you can use as well.

Perch is another one (from Google hDeepMind) - good article about it too here.

The OpenSoundscape python package is also great for training your own CNNs.

Jesse Turner

9 January 2026 3:42pm

Hi Jose,

The links that Carly posted are great resources. Just adding a couple other no-coding-required options to this discussion:

PAMGuard is good for marine bioacoustic classification. It has classifiers already for many species that produce whistles and clicks. It can also be used to create custom classifiers. The program can have a steep learning curve so keep that in mind.

Arbimon is a cloud-based tool for data storage and bioacoustic classification. It has some existing classification models and can be used to create custom ones.

BirdNET Analyzer uses the BirdNET model with an easy to use GUI. Can be used as is or allows for custom classifiers using transfer learning from original BirdNET embeddings.

Cheers,

Jesse

Biodiversity Pathways

23 April 2026 6:20pm

Hi Jose,

You might be interested in BriteKit, which helps you build bioacoustic recognizers using deep learning. 

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discussion

Data in the Data

Stephen Petersen

3 April 2026 3:25pm

Hi All - I gave a talk recently on northern leopard frogs, and in the following discussions, it turned out that some colleagues with ARUs deployed for birds have been getting...

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Chris Nicholas

21 April 2026 2:44am

I recently was at the Los Amigos station, and just for fun turned on my Audiomoth at high frequency (~100khz) and got some crazy frog chorus recordings (along with bats and insects, etc) at a mosquito-infested pond in the Amazon. I too am indeed am looking for where to begin...

Stephen Petersen

21 April 2026 10:19pm

Thanks folks

As I think about this more. I wonder how many ARUs also collect temperature data, as if I remember correctly, this modulates insects (crickets and grasshoppers), and maybe some frog calls (grey tree frogs in my area). We just ordered a couple ARUs but I dont think that temperature is recorded so I will need to zip tie a temp logger to it when we deploy them. Does anyone know if this is an issue that others have encountered? 

Cheers

Stephen

Biodiversity Pathways

23 April 2026 6:15pm

Hi Stephen, you should connect with the acoustic team at WildTrax (environmental sensor data management platform used across Canada)! They can definitely answer both of those questions. You could search the Data Discover portal (on WildTrax - https://portal.wildtrax.ca/discover) to see who has ARU recordings that might interest you. There is lots of open data on WildTrax.

You can also use tools like HawkEars to scan ARU recordings for hundreds of Canadian species, including amphibians (HawkEars is embedded in WildTrax, too): https://github.com/jhuus/HawkEars

Hope this is helpful!

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