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Header image: Laura Kloepper, Ph.D.

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Cutting edge plant conservation

A game-changing new tool is helping conservationists working with critically endangered cliff plants 

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Great work!  Although even the expanded numbers of individual plants are still concerningly tiny, it is reassuring to know that nature can keep more secret holdouts than we...
This has been an incredible adventure so far! Glad to have contributed to a new technology that will have a concrete ecological impact.
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Looking for a Supervisor/Research Group - ML-driven Marine Biomonitoring

Hi everyone, I am a final year MEng Computing student at Imperial College London interested in improving marine biodiversity monitoring with machine learning.I have...

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Hi Filippo, 

Nice to read your message. Have you thought of contacting anyone in the Bioscience department at UCL? In our group "the People and Nature Lab", a few PhD students (Ben and Jason) are working on ML methods for coral reef monitoring. Might be interesting to reach out to them. List of People at CBER.

Best, Aude

 

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Bird Acoustic Surveys: Comparison with traditional transect methods

Baker Consultants Releases Whitepaper Comparing Traditional & Ecoacoustic Bird Survey MethodsBaker Consultants is pleased to announce the release of its latest ecoacoustics...

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Hi Theresa.  In comparison to traditional survey, I think that the time/cost benefits of acoustics are good.  Certainly the set-up, maintenance, and data management requirements are minimal. And if there is significant travel time to site, and the recording period of acoustic survey is long, then I think the benefits are compounded (i.e. there are economies of scale to acoustics that you don't get with trad surveys).



Until the last year or two, the data analysis for species identification has been the time-consuming part.  However, now that systems such as BirdNET are available, this issue is fairly well dealt with (but still needs a little bit of skill/experience).



A couple of scientific papers have assessed these costs/benefits - I hope these make an interesting read.

Carlos

 

A very nice read, especially for me someone new to the field as myself. Nice to see all of the various approaches and to know I wasn't re-inventing the wheel but adding something new (Potential new platform for real time localization).

Looks like my timing wasn't ideal to be included in your summary. Maybe for version #2 :)



 

Thanks for sharing!

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Happy New Year WILDLabbers! What are you looking forward to in 2024?

Happy New Year to all WILDLabbers!!! I hope you had a fun and restful holiday season and are excited for the new year ahead. Looking back, 2023 was quite an eventful and action-...

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Tranforming Conservation Together: Highlights from the 2023 EarthRanger User Conference

Here are a few key insights from this year's event that we're carrying into 2024.

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Hi @hjayanto !No participants from Indonesia, but we did have some from the Philippines, Cambodia, and Bhutan. Happy to help facilitate your adoption. Can you email me at...
Thank you Jordan! We have a plan on the adoption of earth as one of the activity in our WILDLABS awards application. I will try to reach you when we through with the support and/...
Sounds good, thanks @hjayanto !
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What is your favorite package or software for visualizing animal tracking data?

Hi all,I manage a large research collaborative focused on conservation applications of animal tracking data (Smithsonian's Movement of Life Initiative).  I'm interested in...

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Practical sound localization on the Raspberry Pi

I finally got around to writing a high level article about how to sound localize with the sbts-aru such that first time users might actually be able to do it by themselves now.I...

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CT Textbook?! Want to contribute/help author? Reach out! 

Hello All,I have had some great discussions this past few weeks on the Conservation Tech Introductory textbook for undergrads. If others would still like to be involved as authors...

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Is there an update on this effort? It'd be great to create a fully open source open education resource (OER) from this!

Hi Andrew, 

Are you still working on this text? I'd be interested in authoring a chapter, if you are. I'm a reasercher in Human Centered Design and Engineering at University of Washington, and I work in this space. 

Hi Stephie,

I want to start by apologising for not responding for more than ten months.I continue to be impressed by the information that Wildlabs provides, particularly in the conservation tech sector, which I try to follow because it's a subject that I'm really enthusiastic about. I am now situated in Germany.

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

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...

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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

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. 

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AI to operate Wildlife Passage Gates

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...

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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.

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Apply to Beta test Instant Detect 2.0

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...

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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)

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Mesh camera trap network?

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...

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Hi Sam,

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

Thanks

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Hydromoth for coastal & offshore surveying

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....

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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:

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)

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:



 

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Seeking Host Organisations for Travel Scholarship Application

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...

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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

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discussion

Subsea DIY Burnwire for Deep-sea BRUVS

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...

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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)? 

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.

 

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

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