WILDLABS logo

WILDLABS logo

Global Feed

There's always something new happening on WILDLABS. Keep up with the latest from across the community through the Global view, or toggle to My Feed to see curated content from groups you've joined. 

Header image: Laura Kloepper, Ph.D.

discussion

Open-Source design guide for a low-cost, long-running aquatic stereo camera

Stephanie O'Donnell

13 December 2023 5:47pm

Katie Dunkley's project has been getting a heap of attention in the conservation tech community - she very kindly joined Variety Hour to give us a walkthrough of her Open-Source...

2 0
Liz Ferguson

15 December 2023 4:53pm

This is awesome - thanks for sharing Stephanie!! We actually were looking around for a low-cost video camera to augment an MPA monitoring project locally and this looks like a really great option!

 

Cheers, Liz

Daniel Hugelmann

28 December 2023 8:54pm

Thank you for sharing! Super interesting, as we don't see many underwater stereo cameras! We also use Blue Robotics components in our projects and have found them reliable and easy to work with. 

See full post
discussion

AI to operate Wildlife Passage Gates

Peter Lapidus

11 December 2023 4:17pm

HelloI am not a scientist. I am looking to collaborate with someone or a group who understands how to integrate live photo animal identification into a mechanical devise to open...

27 0
Kim Hendrikse

22 December 2023 4:20pm

BTW. I found out that the Jetson Orin NX 16GB module is drawing around 20W when running continuous inference, processing streams from 6x cameras at 6 fps.

I'll try and find out what you can do with a Pi 5 and a smaller model over Christmas.

See full post
discussion

Apply to Beta test Instant Detect 2.0

Sam Seccombe

11 May 2023 10:55am

Hi WildLabs,ZSL is looking for Beta testers for Instant Detect 2.0. If you are a conservationist, scientist or wildlife ranger with experience working with innovative...

1 2
Sean Roberts

21 December 2023 3:48am

Will you accept personal/hobbyist focused on conservation on their small plots of land (10-100 acres)?

I would, and know others, who would happily pay more than the official conservationists rate for the service, which could help to further subsidize the project. (Referring to your statement here: https://wildlabs.net/discussion/instant-detect-20-and-related-cost)

See full post
discussion

Mesh camera trap network?

Casey Slaught

9 April 2017 1:29pm

Does anyone have something to share about wireless camera traps that make use of a mesh-network type of architecture. One such solution, BuckeyeCam allows cameras to route images...

24 0
Harold Tay

8 November 2021 1:05pm

Hi Sam,

Impressive!  Any chance the LoRa code is open source?  I should like to take a gander.

Thanks

Sean Roberts

21 December 2023 3:42am

Oh I see recent threads on the topic. Sharing here to link people over. 

Apply to Beta test Instant Detect 2.0 | WILDLABS

Hi WildLabs,ZSL is looking for Beta testers for Instant Detect 2.0. If you are a conservationist, scientist or wildlife ranger with experience working with innovative technology and you think that a camera trap that can send images, alerts and 'health' information in near real-time from anywhere in the world would be useful, please apply to be a Beta tester of the Instant Detect 2.0 system at the new Instant Detect 2.0 website: https://instantdetect.co.uk/contact-us/Applicants will be shortlisted in June with Beta test systems ready to ship immediately to those selected. Best wishes,Sam Seccombe

wildlabsnet

Instant Detect 2.0 and related cost | WILDLABS

I am doing a research project on rhino poaching at Kruger National Park. I was impressed with the idea of Instant Detect 2.0. I do not know the cost involved with installing that and tried to reach out but in vein. If the cost cannot be defined, I cannot move forward with the idea. Does anyone have any information ?

wildlabsnet
See full post
Link

Semi-automated prediction of behavioral states in wild understudied King vultures (Sarcoramphus papa)

Tobias Petri

20 December 2023 1:34pm

For the current e-obs newsletter, Chris Beirne and I have summarized our previous work on the annotation of King vultures in Costa Rica.

2
discussion

Hydromoth for coastal & offshore surveying

Sol Milne

16 November 2023 7:36am

Hi all! I'm interested in deploying a Hydromoth on an Uncrewed Surface Vehicle (USV) to collect acoustic data for biodiversity analysis, for coastal and offshore marine surveys....

3 0
Harold Tay

18 November 2023 1:47am

Hi Sol,

I think your concern is well placed.  The pros typically tow an array of hydrophones, in its simpler configuration it looks like a long fat rubber hose containing maybe a dozen transducers feeding their electrical signals to a recording unit back on the ship.  All this is done to reduce noise from the ship, from waves crashing, and flow noise.  The multiple transducers can also be electronically tuned to be directional so that it can be "pointed" away from a noise source (like the ship).

In your position, I would just try the simplest thing that could work, then fix the problems as they arise.  It could be you may need to be dead in the water while recording.  To address surface noise (slapping waves, wind), you could mount the hydromoth low down on a spar buoy, which you tow into position.

 

Best of luck, it sounds like an interesting project (c:

Jamie Macaulay

19 December 2023 2:20pm

Hydromoths are great for the price but they do not have the most streamlined housing and audio quality won't be as good as something like a SoundTrap or really any recorder with a proper hydrophone and 16-bit +DAQ system.

If you can afford it, this is an excellent SoundTrap based towed autonomous system NOAA have been using. It might work towed behind an autonomous vehicle

Alternatively, if you can have something inside the vehicle, a simple tape recorder (e.g. Tascam DR40X) and hydrophone on cable  will provide excellent sound quality. You could also use something like a Raspberry Pi with audio focussed ADC hat to record but that would require a bit more programming. Even consider a standard AudioMoth and plug a proper hydrophone into the audio jack - this would still have a 12-bit ADC but would provide better sound quality than a hydromoth (hydrophones are more omnidirectional and there's no air filled causing reflections and attenuation)

Kim Hendrikse

20 December 2023 6:57am

If you are considering an external microphone and a towed system, then you would also be in a position to consider a raspberry pi with an external microphone with sbts-aru. Another option:



 

See full post
discussion

Seeking Host Organisations for Travel Scholarship Application

Eva Neill

19 December 2023 12:54am

Hi all,I'm Eva, a final year undergraduate studying Joint Honours Biology and Geography at the University of St Andrews.  I've recently joined the WildLabs community in...

1 0
Herdhanu Jayanto

20 December 2023 3:07am

Hi Eva, 

Me and my colleagues run a small NGO based on Yogyakarta in Indonesia, although our projects are spread around the country. One of our active project is working with the movement ecology of Sunda gharials in Berbak-Sembilang National Park. One of the other is for Malayan Giant Turtle conservation using one-plan approach, which we are planning to start in situ phase. We can't give you promise about anything, but are able to be the host organization and would love to talk the opportunity!

Cheers,

Dhanu

See full post
discussion

Subsea DIY Burnwire for Deep-sea BRUVS

Titus

6 December 2023 3:49am

Hello everyone. I'm part of a team working on a low-cost, deep-sea camera (BRUVS) project and we're currently facing challenges with our subsea burnwire release system. We're...

9 0
Rob Appleby

11 December 2023 10:21am

Yeah from memory we found it difficult to get the relatively high voltage (~50VDC) and current (can't remember) in a small package, but we had almost no experience back then and gave up fairly quickly. We also found it difficult to get much help from the company if I remember correctly...

so is the problem with the nichrome waterproofing everything? I picture something like coating the nichrome in high temp grease (especially where it's in contact with the nylon line and the line itself) and encapsulating the entire thing in a semi-flexible silicone (so the line can slip out after detechment) with something buoyant to help pull it towards the surface maybe? Speaking of, how are tags being recovered (i.e. do they need to pop to the surface)? 

Kyler Abernathy

15 December 2023 4:17pm

Hi Titus,

We've used this design/procedure for many years with our Deep Sea Camera systems, with good reliability.  Not OTS but not hard to make and most of the materials come out to be inexpensive per unit.  The most expensive item is the M101 connector ($25ea), but if you get them with extra length on the cable, you can essentially cut it off at the point where it joins the burn-loop and reuse that connector until it gets too short.  You'd also need an F101 connector integrated with your BRUV, this connecting with the burnwire and forming the the positive side of the circuit, and a ground - our ground connection goes to a large bolt on the frame near the burnwire loop - but that connector generally shouldn't need replacement unless it gets damaged.

These burnwires generally break in 3-7min, burning at about 1Amp, ~14.5V.  A thinner version of the coated wire could go faster or with less power required.

We do also employ galvanic releases as backups.  I really like redundancy on recovery mechanisms!  The ones we use are made by International Fishing Devices, Inc.  Various distributors sell certain models of their products (i.e. different time durations) but if you contact them directly, they can also make custom duration ones for you.

 

Harold Tay

19 December 2023 4:47pm

Hi Titus,

I've used latching solenoids as a release in a fresh water application. The product linked to is the one I have used, but has been discontinued (it's been quite a while).  Anyway these little devices hold a plunger in place with a permanent magnet, but release the plunger when a coil is energised that counters the magnet.  The holding force is not great, but more than enough to keep the safety on a mechanical trigger.  The whole device can be potted and sealed (ideally under vacuum to eliminate voids).  When pushing the plunger in to arm the solenoid, there is a definite click when the magnet kicks in, to confirm the locked state.

A similar device is the electropermanent magnet, which doesn't have a plunger, in fact it has no moving parts.  You provide the steel piece that that this device will release when energised, as with a latching solenoid. It generally has greater holding force than a latching solenoid. I've used these in a seawater application.  It's worth noting that there exist ferromagnetic stainless steels that can be used here to avoid corrosion.

Thanks,

-harold

See full post
discussion

New Raspberry Pi Sound Localizing ARU is now fully released and ready for use

Kim Hendrikse

7 October 2023 2:10pm

Hi All,My low cost Raspberry Pi based sound localizing ARU is now fully released and ready for use. You can download it from here: It installs and configures with just one...

16 5
Lars Holst Hansen

18 December 2023 3:42pm

Hi @chrisgnicholas ! AudioMoth has a pipeline for exactly that: 

https://github.com/OpenAcousticDevices/Application-Notes/blob/master/Using_the_AudioMoth_GPS_Board/Using_the_AudioMoth_GPS_Board.pdf

https://github.com/OpenAcousticDevices/Application-Notes/tree/master/Using_AudioMoth_GPS_Sync_to_Make_Synchronised_Recordings

Cheers,

Lars

Kim Hendrikse

18 December 2023 7:29pm

When I designed the recorder. I chose it to use jackd2 instead of pulse audio or direct alsa access because unless I was mistaken it could support multiple consumers of the sound source and the other approaches not.

Originally its purpose was part of my security system so it records as well as being able to connect and listen live. That’s simply a case of also installing icecast2 and darkice onto the same system. Then I discovered bio-acoustics and pivoted and then discovered wildlabs 😀

In principle you could both those things as well as real time audio pattern matching no problem.

See full post
discussion

WILDLABS Platform Updates

Filip Hnízdo

31 May 2022 9:20am

Hi everyone, I'm Filip, director at Octophin Digital, a little digital agency building things for the wildlife conservation sector. The WILDLABS team have been working with us to...

15 9
Filip Hnízdo

13 January 2023 3:16pm

Hi everyone!

Happy 2023 and a slightly unusual bug fix to mark the first WILDLABS Platform update post of the year.

Our emoji / reaction system broke due to the library it relies on, Twitter's Twemoji, going down (for reasons discussed in the tweet link below). We have had to fall back to native browser emoji while a replacement / mirror of these is slotted in. This may mean emoji display slightly differently for you in the picker, more resembling your current device / browser.

Thank you to @Alasdair for sending me the below tweet which helped work out what was wrong:

Filip Hnízdo

13 December 2023 11:15pm

Hi everyone! 

It's been a very busy year of development on the WILDLABS Platform but one with not many of these updates from me. This is mostly due to much of it being behind-the-scenes work that's hard to write about (I'll try below!), or huge, exciting projects and features that are launching in 2024. But I felt an update on some of the major changes we have implemented this year was due so here that is.

Before we go on to the main Platform, it's no longer a secret that we've been working with the WILDLABS Team on building The Inventory: a collaborative conservation technology wiki you'll soon see a lot of if you haven't already joined as a beta tester.

I thought, pretty sensibly given its scope, that the WILDLABS Platform itself was the most feature-full web project you could build, and then The Inventory came along and it's taken things to a whole other level. I'm so proud of what we've built for it and I'm so excited to see it launch and grow; with the entire sector benefiting from a place to find and collaborate on the tools needed to protect the world's life.

I'm looking forward to writing more about The Inventory next year, but there's a great overview of it and how you can get involved by the WILDLABS Team over at https://wildlabs.net/discussion/introducing-inventory-rise-conservation-tech-wiki

We've also got another major WILDLABS Platform feature launching very soon that will have a big impact on the community and its members' contributions. And it's fun. But more of that another time... 🦡

Onto those core platform updates:

Performance

With thousands of database queries, media and more pulled into every part of the site, tuning performance on the WILDLABS Platform has been one of the hardest challenges. I was going to run through an example of just how much information there is aggregated on a page (group statistics, user info, bookmarks, reactions, comments...) but it's a lot and I gave up. So I'll instead just mention some of the things we've done to speed things up over the year.

  • Images have been compressed and automatically resized to a far better level than before throughout the system to reduce loading times
  • We've cut down the amount of pings back and forth to the server to check for notifications and other live updates (an amusing major change was only checking for these things if the browser tab was active which meant those 100 WILDLABS tab users among you are no longer tiring out the CPU!)
  • We've moved our caching system (not making a database query twice if the data hasn't changed basically) to the Redis in memory database system (this had a big impact)
  • We've put even more things into that cache so they aren't re-loaded unnecessarily
  • We've moved our servers (this week, hence the scheduled maintenance) to some new infrastructure which allowed us to speed things up even further by allocating more memory.

If there's anything in particular that seems slow for you (especially if it's regularly slow), please let the WILDLABS Team know so we can know where to focus on making the next set of performance improvements.

Notifications

Email notifications were something that took a good three total rewrites and a lot of thought to get right. They have been one of the hardest things to work out the best approach and technical structure for but we've got there I hope, and I hope you've liked receiving them (or opted out if you don't want them).

The new activity email notification system works by a user profile setting (you can edit this yourself) of after how many days of inactivity (not visiting the Platform at all) you would like to be notified of what happened while you were away. This comes in the form of:

  • Direct messages you've received
  • Mentions
  • Comments / replies on posts you've made
  • Reactions to your content

If none of this happens you don't get an email, you only get an email about the same updates once, and if you visit the Platform yourself you clear any emails from sending. This cuts down the notifications feeling spammy and just lets you know about the direct interactions other members had with your profile since you were last here.

On-Platform notifications (the little bell) remain separate and unchanged.

Other improvements

Here are some of the other bits that we've done across the site since I last posted an update:
 

  • Dozens of design and visual usability tweaks, especially on mobile, to make things more usable and readable. A big shout out to front end developer @valeria  who moved on from Octophin this month for all her work on the Platform over the last few years.
  • Embeds of external links should be faster and clearer now as we've built our own system off the back of the iframely embed service and cached them the first time they're loaded.
  • We've tidied up some of the information collected on events and careers and made certain things required so that it's clearer what something is about and who it is for.
  • Introductions / summaries are now compulsory on all content.
  • The little hover popups on people's names are in more places across the site (not just mentions) and have more useful, clearer information in them.
  • There are some new sort options in the members directory, including sorting a search by members' contributions to the community (also look out for some more tools to count your Platform contributions coming soon).
  • We've rebuilt the list of a member's activity that shows up on their / your user profile into a paginated list that shows everything rather than only a handful of recent entries.
  • We've rebuilt the sorting and filtering for the "global feed" and "my feed" to more accurately show what is going on on the site and in your groups. The "my feed" list especially should make much more sense now.

-----------


From me and the rest of the Octophin team, I hope you've had a wonderful 2023 on and off the WILDLABS Platform. As challenging as it often is, seeing the activity and collaborations on here every day makes it one of the most rewarding projects to work on.

Looking forward to a whole new set of improvements and features in 2024!

See full post
discussion

Which market-available microphones, accelerometers and GIS sensors for dogs / pets ?

Luigi

7 September 2023 3:21pm

I have conducted an MSc thesis in data-science applied on bioacoustics data, and wish to carry on some experiments on my own now, using domestic environment as a lab.I am looking...

6 2
Luigi

6 December 2023 2:03pm

good to know that GPS coordinates can be used to sync the time. 
Does GPS resolution allow to a desired time resolution (e.g. seconds) ? Does choice of time resolution significantly depends on the physiology of the animal (e.g. time of re-action to stimuli, hence less than a second) or for most animal communication and animal behaviour is it enough above a second? 
 

Paul Bunker

17 December 2023 3:02pm

I am not an acoustics person but train and deploy canines in the field. Are you looking for something that records  sniff rate and patterns?  For GPS I just use a Garmin collar system Altha 100. There is a Conservation Canine group that might be worth asking your question in. 

See full post
discussion

Call for Interview Subjects: Conservation Bioacoustics Methods

Samuel Hertz

14 December 2023 8:47pm

As a part of my ongoing doctoral research in Geography at Royal Holloway University of London, I’m looking for a new round of interview subjects who are willing to share their...

3 0
Stefan Zeeman

15 December 2023 12:19pm

Happy to help Samuel, will send a message

See full post
discussion

Thermal cameras for monitoring visitors in highly vulnerable conservation areas

Alex González

21 June 2022 3:44pm

Hi everybody, Im Alex González, a consultant and researcher in sustainable tourism and conservation. I'm currently consulting a conservation organisation for the development...

7 0
Kim Hendrikse

15 December 2023 8:09pm

Hi,



This is a really late answer but I was new to wildlabs then. I have a security appliance that uses state of the AI models and user defined polygon areas of interest that generates video alerts of intrusions in typically under a second.

Although its setup to install automatically on an NVidia AI on the edge boxes of your intentions were to monitor a great deal of cameras you could also install it on a desktop with a high end GPU for very high performance. At home I use a desktop with an rtx 2080ti and monitor around 15 cameras and a thermal imaging camera (old one).

I have also tested a high end model (yolov7) on a high end thermal imaging camera image and it works fine as well.

Thermal yolov7

Thermal imaging cameras are hellishly expensive though and I’ve found that new extremely light sensitive cameras like the HIKvision colorvu series almost obsoletes them in terms of people detection at night at a fraction of the cost.

If you are interested I’d be happy to show you a demo in a video meeting sometime if you like. I’m pretty sure it would meeting all your intrusion detection and alerting needs.

My project page is

https://github.com/hcfman/sbts-install
See full post
discussion

Video camera trap analysis help

muh

21 November 2023 7:49am

Hello,I'm a complete newbie so any help would be appreciated. I never trained any ML models (have junior/mid experience with Python and R) nor annotated the data but would like to...

8 0
Liz Ferguson

15 December 2023 4:48pm

Hi there!, 

You should definitely check out VIAME, which includes a video annotation tool in addition to deep learning neural network training and deployment. It has a user friendly interface, has a publicly available server option that mitigates the need for GPU enabled computer for network training, and has an amazing support staff that help you with your questions. You can also download the VIAME software for local use. The tool was originally developed for marine life annotation, but can be used for any type of video or annotation (we are using it to annotate pollinators in video). Super easy to annotate as well. Worth checking out!  

Cheers, 
Liz Ferguson

See full post
Link

Geospatial data training and education for conservation

Szilvia Szilagyi

15 December 2023 3:20pm

Sharing our startup's webpage, featuring information about our services and products.
We are open for new partnership, collaboration R&D project in the field of GIS data analysis.

0
discussion

Master Project Collaboration/Ideas!

Zach Ng

4 November 2023 10:37pm

Hi everyone! My name is Zach Ng, and I am currently pursuing a Master's degree in Conservation and International Wildlife Trade - MSc at the University of Kent with the...

2 2
Brad Nahill

14 December 2023 9:35pm

Hi Zach,

Our organization (SEE Turtles) has a campaign working on the illegal tortoiseshell trade around the world called Too Rare To Wear. We are going to be updating our Global Tortoiseshell Report next year and one of the gaps we have in data is in China, where the illegal trade is now happening most frequently on platforms like WeChat.

We'd be interested in discussing with you if interested in how we might be able to gather some data on this trade in the country. I'm including a couple of links below about the program and the last report and will reach out by email.

-Brad 

See full post