Investment Showcase and Pitching Competition
24 May 2019 1:14pm
Internship and Early Career Opportunities 2019
3 May 2019 4:33pm
24 May 2019 11:41am
Caracal
Caracal is a cloud-based data integration & analysis platform for protected areas. We are looking for creative graphic designers and frontend developers who are willing to contribute remotely to our young yet exciting conservation technology project. We primarily need help developing intuitive map icons for categorizing incidents and species, as well as building frontend components for our web app.
This project is ongoing and those interested are encouraged to email us at [email protected] or by completing this form:
https://forms.gle/e2TA24scf5Ceq7LK6
FLIR Conservation Discount Program
23 May 2019 12:00am
Announcing DotDotGoose – open source software for counting objects in an image
22 May 2019 1:37pm
Environmental Management and the Raspberry Pi
21 May 2019 10:42pm
GWP Webinar Recording: Using SMART at scale for effective wildlife protection
21 May 2019 12:00am
Speed camera: Help needed to get traffic data
10 May 2019 5:26pm
16 May 2019 7:24pm
Hi Greg,
You are getting some great technical advice from folks a lot more qualified than me. But as I read through everything, I see you are potentially wanting to use your solution for citing violations. Whatever solution you install needs to be "future proof" for this from the start. Not sure how that would work where you are (Zimbabwe, I believe?), but usually the accuracy of the speed reading and the vehicle identification has to be beyond reproach. Calibration and accuracy, data integrity, etc., all need to be considered.
I would at least look into a buy vs. make decision (or a hybrid of the two) before committing to a completely homegrown solution. It sounds like you only want to install one system. You can find small but acurate radar systems and cameras pretty readily on amazon if you wanted a hybrid solution, or you could look into any one of the dozens of companies who make traffic speed monitoring equipment. You already have a place to install, so that helps. Some systems would be too expensive for your budgets or your needs, but some would be pretty reasonable. Furthermore, those companies could potentially be enticed to provide a system at a substantial discount if they can consider it a charitable contribution. But I'm just thinking out loud here, and maybe it would be difficult for these companies to ship a system to Zimbabwe.
Just my 2 cents.
Drue
17 May 2019 7:43am
Dear Drue
You are definitely correct regarding the need for any system to be reasonably accurate and very accurate should citations start to be issued. That actually was why I like the german system http://raserabwehr.de as it seems slightly more full proof than working on Doppler. If you could point me in the right direction for what you find on Amazon that would be great but as a package. The main thing is it must be easy to install and at a price that does the job.
Initially our intention will be to use it to monitor the road so we can work out which groups to target for awareness campaigns, citations would be probably the last on our list.
Anyway thanks for your thoughts and if you come up with something do let us know.
18 May 2019 12:12am
Hi Greg,
Indeed, the German solution you identified might be a better solution than what I had found on Amazon, which were mostly Doppler solutions, and thinking more about it, would not give you the ability to do long term data analytics on the traffic patterns, which might be important to achieving your objectives. A few alternatives to the German solution would be:
https://enforcementlogix.com (Canadian)
https://www.atsol.com/solutions/speed-safety/ (US)
Good luck,
Drue
WILDLABS TECH HUB Showcase
17 May 2019 12:00am
TECH HUB Virtual Meetup Recording: Scaling technology solutions to tackle the illegal wildlife trade
17 May 2019 12:00am
Meet the WILDLABS TECH HUB Winners
13 May 2019 12:00am
WILDLABS Virtual Meetup Series – Season 2!
19 February 2019 3:35pm
14 March 2019 3:49am
Hi Steph.
Thanks for the clarification. I had misunderstood and thought it was a call for volunteers to propose potential talks for the virtual meetups. I hadn't realized the speakers were already chosen. Ha ha ha. I will take a look at the previous meetups to understand the format better. Looking forward to the next one and will participate in the discussion :)
Akiba
21 March 2019 2:14pm
And I'd very much like to hear about your ideas!
Mind you, it's not always the case that problem and solution sets overlap. But the more problems and solutions one knows about, the more likely it is to make a match.
Thanks,
-harold
7 May 2019 3:18pm
Hi all,
Reminder that the second event in Season 2 of the series is happing TOMORROW May 8 from 2pm-3:30pm GMT / 10am-11:30am EDT! Note that this is 3pm-4:30pm BST due to daylight savings. The meetup will focus on Tools & Spaces for Collaboration, with contributions from 3 wonderful speakers and 3 innovative makerspaces/field labs. You can still register here to join. For those who are unable to join us live, the meetup will be recorded and shared on the series page within a week of the event.
Hope to see you tomorrow!
Talia
2nd Women in Environmental Sciences Workshop
7 May 2019 12:00am
Technology for Wildlife and the Looming Spectre of E-Waste
3 May 2019 12:00am
Call for papers for Data Mining and AI For Conservation Workshop at KDD2019
1 May 2019 2:28pm
How IoT is being used for Australian agriculture
28 April 2019 8:43am
ST60 Contactless Connection over 60GHz short range RF module
26 April 2019 10:16am
Capacity Building for Conservation Global Conference 2019
26 April 2019 12:00am
Google 2019 Geo for Good Summit—apply before May 3
22 April 2019 6:43pm
Who can construct an experimental camera trap device?
11 April 2019 9:59pm
15 April 2019 4:50pm
@arky I'm chatting with Akiba tomorrow and with touch base with you after our conversation. Thanks for your interest!
17 April 2019 9:49am
Morning all - I'm new here and I'm just getting my feet wet as I look around the issues du jour.
Thinking about this proposition (a detection and response combination) and its use in aversion measures (example - discourage the carnivore from following the track to the village), it may be worth bearing in mind an architecture where the detection and response systems are logically separable, so that although they CAN be run as a single physical unit, they could also relatively simply be evolved to support a two-station (or more) model where a "guard" detector sets off an "alarm" response in one or more other units.
All it means in design terms is that the two logical sub-systems (detect and respond) communicate via a message-oriented interface rather than being tightly integrated through, say, shared memory.
19 April 2019 10:32am
Thanks Andy, I didn't realize the potenial of such solution in aversion measures.
Discussing an Open Source Camera Trap Project
2 April 2019 2:49am
3 April 2019 8:11am
What avout the open source OpenMV? It looks like most of the general requirements are met with this platform?
3 April 2019 10:46am
Hi Tim.
The OpenMV is quite interesting and I haven't thought of it for a camera trap application. It's quite useful for machine learning operations, but the camera resolution is 320x240 color or 640x480 grayscale which is a bit on the low side. That's the equivalent of 0.3 MP. The main reason for the low resolution however is that they focus more on the machine learning algorithms and video capture rather than still images. For still images, I think it'd be nice to take advantage of the 5MP cameras on up to the 10+ MP cameras for a flexible camera trap system. I'll be doing animal population surveys in the forest and mountain we manage which would mainly consist of still photos.
As an off-the-shelf solution, Arducam actually has quite good specs. There are potentially other issues such as how long it takes to get the picture off the camera or take consecutive photos. The FPGA code is also not open but it might be a good starting point to a fully open camera trap system.
Akiba
19 April 2019 10:30am
Perhaps the new generation of low-power and high performance boards based on RISC V might allow us to build camera traps that could handle high resolution imagery.
Has anyone got their hands on these boards yet?
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sipeed-maix-the-world-first-risc-v-64-ai-module#/
Virtual Meetup Discussion: Low-cost, Open-source Solutions
8 April 2019 6:11pm
16 April 2019 4:27pm
Hi everyone,
Thanks for joining us at the meetup last week! If you missed it, @TaliaSpeaker has just posted the recording and her fanastic notes from the meetup. In this one, she's also included a list of recommended reading, compiled from all the resources you were sharing in the chat.
There were some threads of conversation that came up that I'm interested to pick up here. If there are others, please do pop them below or use the reply as a new thread option below to break off into new discussions.
1. Help offered vs Help needed
Every meetup we get people joining who share in their registration that they are either looking for projects to get involved in, or need to find tech savvy people to help them with specific projects. Meredith (@snapshot_serengeti) is nice example of this. She came to meetup needing to design and build novel field equipment, and wanted to know who she could partner with to construct the designs. She's now started a thread about her needs and is getting lots of help here. Likewise, @Carl_Emogor was looking for specific advice about tech for studying pangolins and has had feedback here.
Q: Ideas for how we can facilitate this better around the meetups, or this good enough? Should we have a 'community announcements' thread attached to each meetup where people can say 'i can offer this'/'I need this'? Or is there a better way you've experienced elsewhere?
2. Mapping the conservation tech ecosystem
This comes up so. often. I get asked to contribute to this sort of map every other week, and I know of a handful of exsiting spreadsheets being maintained by people that go some way to answering this quesiton for various parts of our community (specific tech, specific conservation challenges). I think it's been raised every meetup as a good starting point, but it's been a particularly strong point of discussion in this meetup and the next gen tracking tech discussion. So my question is,
Q. Who is interested in this and where do we start? Are there examples from other sectors/communities of this sort of thing? Do we need to build out WILDLABS with new functionality (e.g. beef up profiles , tags + introduce project pages) to make it real, or is there an easy first step we could do right now?
3. Swap meet?
@Rob+Appleby raised this after the meetup:
Also, on a complete side note, I have about 25 used 9602 Iridium modems and patch antennas, that I am happy to donate to someone through WILDLABS, and possibly a few other useful bits and pieces if there's any interest out there? And it got me thinking that a "swap meet" or donation page could be a useful resource maybe? I was thinking about all those VHF and GPS collars sitting in cupboards and drawers around the world that could be recycled/re-used etc. And David mentioned his Trident donation... Just a thought.
I think this sounds like a great idea! @Rob+Appleby - first step could be to take it forward and reply as a new thread below, throw it out there and see if others are interested?
UPDATE: Continued here
4. Specific space for sharing funding opps
@kemprachael, you raised this, could you elaborate a little more on what you were thinking? My first impulse is that it's totally possible and probably needed, but I'm curious to explore more about what you want from it. Is it a new group, is it just a test thread as a start?
5. What is a platform?
@Alasdair - you were keen to get into the details of the platform - to pull out what is needed and how to sustain each part. I'm up for it, this is one to break off into a new discussion?
6. Financial sustainability of open source projects
@Freaklabs has made a great start getting into the depths of this discussion topic here. He's pulled the relevant questions from the list above and shared his perspective/experience in response to each one. It would be great to hear some other voices in response to the questions, so you're interested in the topic and have ideas/experience, check it out.
7. Wildbook Q&A
TBC - there was obviously a LOT of interest in Wildbook, so we're talking with the team about having a specific space where you can get all of your questions answered. It'll likely be a thread - maybe live? - we'll keep you posted.
Finally, if you have ideas for what you'd like to see in future meetups, drop them in this thread here. I've done a summary of where we're at in responding to requests to-date, and I've also shared the ideas we're throwing around for season three. They are by no means concrete, so now is the time to help shape them.
Thanks
Steph
17 April 2019 4:32pm
Hey folks,
I've written a collection list of resources about open hardware for conservation. Maybe it is useful for somebody here: https://blog.niklasjordan.com/conservation-technology/
If you have any resources I've forgotten, please share the stuff with me, and I will add it to the list.
- Niklas
17 April 2019 4:58pm
Daaaamn! That's a great list.
Akiba
Help requested—verifiable stories where low-tech solutions beats out high-tech
8 April 2019 5:15pm
13 April 2019 10:26pm
One more that just came to mind is the beehive fences that help protect crops and reduce elephant-human conflict. Dr Lucy King will be speaking in just under 2 hours on this topic, live-streamed on the WCN Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/wildnet/
more information on the elephants and bees project:
http://elephantsandbees.com/
17 April 2019 3:07pm
Conservation dogs is a big one, with koala scat dogs being highly successful here in QLD, Aus. I also was at the local dump the other day and I noticed that one of the crew working there was walking around cracking a whip to disperce all the ibis trying to get into the pit. They all seemed to fly away immediately, and he was a good 30m or so from the nearest bird. As this sort of thing is of great interest to me, I approached him and asked a bunch of questions, like, how long does it take them to return, and what other things have you tried? He was really helpful. Basically, the whip along with water sprayers are the only things so far that consistently work to keep the birds away for any length of time. They tried 'loud sound players' (didn't know much more than that) to no avail and the public also complained. I was there a good half an hour talking with him and I didn't see any birds come back into the pit, but he said sometimes it only takes about ten minutes. Other times it can be hours. It's interesting because there's a study showing that macropods didn't habituate to either a whip crack or their own warning stimulus (foot stomp - see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0014549), so perhaps the whip crack is a little more immune to habituation/desensitization?
17 April 2019 3:19pm
Here's a link to a study about koala scat detection dogs: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep08349?dom=pscau&src=syn and check out Figure 1, which compares difference in time between detections in dogs and humans: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep08349/figures/1
It's hilarious! Literally my favourite box-and-whiskers plot of all time (and yes, I do have a favourite).
WILDLABS Virtual Meetup Recording: Tools & Spaces for Collaboration
17 April 2019 12:00am
Camera-trapping best-practices
15 June 2016 4:25pm
5 February 2019 11:59am
Hi everyone,
I thought I'd update this thread, because the results of our camera trap survey have finally(!) been written up and published.
See the article Camera‐trapping version 3.0: current constraints and future priorities for development, lead by @P.Glover.Kapfer .
We cover a lot in there, so hopefully there's something interesting/useful for everyone.
Fire away with any Q's or discussion
Thanks
Ollie
29 March 2019 11:09am
Hi Ollie
As a newbie to camera trap data, this makes interesting reading.
Just to check my understanding on terminology, in Figure 5, the reference to "Automatic filtering of blanks" - did that refer to eliminating false positives, so reducing the number of images that are not of interest ?
Andy
16 April 2019 12:58pm
Hi Andy, yep you've got that exactly right. False positives.
Glad you found it interesting. Thanks,
Ollie
9-axis sensors for tracking tiny animals
14 April 2019 12:19am
14 April 2019 7:02pm
Thanks Harold for the clarification on the accuracy of the sensor! Sounds like this isn't where it needs to be for accurate location tracking. I live just down the streen from Diginal Naturalism Labs, Andy is wonderful. Right now I have a network of 20 feeders all over our town which read implanted RFID's of visiting hummingbirds. Our thought was that maybe we could use a temporary glue to attach one of these to the back of a bird, and knowing the exact feeder location and time would allow us to calculate the amount of drift. If feeders were visited often the could be used as recallibration points to reset drift.
Anyways, thank you again for the input. Even if the location tracking aspect doesn't work, tracking the levels of activity would be super interesting! I'll probably start with that :).
14 April 2019 11:53pm
Hi jjinsing,
You could take the 9 axis LSM9DS1 sensor from the Horizon tag (open source) + firmware and build a custom module. Your limitation will be the coin cell battery and switching to a smaller microcontroller to get the size and weight down. What's the weight of the hummingbirds? 11g odd?
There is a tarantular tracking project that requires a similar sized tag (bluetooth base stations to track), so if that gets built you could inherit that in the future. Htarold is correct in that actual location will need a local rfid / base station at the feeding station to know where they are and you'd be looking at behavioural and energetics logged to flash etc.
Cheers,
Alasdair
15 April 2019 2:36am
Hi Jay, Alastair,
Small world! You've got a great resource at your doorstep then (c:
Your idea of tracking the birds between known feeding locations is a good one, and it's made use of here. But I don't know if the drift will cooperate over that long a period. A colleague who looked into cheap accelerometers for navigation told me it doesn't work after 10 seconds or so. But this was some years ago and things may have improved. It might be possible to detect when a bird is stationary, to zero the device. This is like when a fireman puts his foot down in the above case.
Thanks,
-harold
Financial Sustainability of Open Hardware Projects
12 April 2019 12:44am
12 April 2019 2:02am
Q: Would both designers and customers both be interested in having a UK producer holding stocks of open source designs? (UK)
This is a really interesting question because rather than dealing with a business model from the point of view of a manufacturer, it's dealing with it from the point of view of a distributor. A distributor takes a portion of the markup of a product sale in exchange for selling the product through their channel. In many cases, it's quite a significant portion and is normally around 40 to 50% of the total margin of the product (if it's a distributor with it's own retail channel, ie: Sparkfun).
When I work with distributors, I evaluate them based on the value-add they provide. For a distributor to earn their portion of the markup, they have to provide some unique service that will help increase sales or provide value to the customers of the product. For example, if they are skilled with the product and can handle both customer technical support and returns locally or in a local language, that's a value-add for my customers that I'm interested in. Or if they have large volumes of targeted traffic for the specific niche I'm interested in and can increase sales more than I could do myself, than that's also a value-add for me.
If they're willing to purchase product and pay up-front or manufacture my products for their local market with a commission to me, then that's also a value-add to me. Most distributors accept products on consignment and pay out only when products sell. Unsold and returned products get sent back to the manufacturer. If they pay upfront or manufacture, the vaue they bring is that they absorb the inventory risk which means I don't have to.
If it's just to sell my products through their channel on consignment without having a specific targeted local audience, then I'd have to really think hard about it. If I can do the same type of thing by just listing my products on Amazon and using Amazon's FBA service with local warehouses, then I'd rather do that and pay the fixed fee to Amazon. I can just absorb that into the final retail cost and since it's not a percentage of retail cost, it won't scale with the cost.
So the answer is that if you're a middle man or considering using a middle man such as a distibutor, it's important to understand what value-add they bring and whether the margin they absorb is worth it.
Akiba
12 April 2019 5:18am
Q: How to balance low cost and high quality (India)
Q: QA in open source solutions? (UK)
I'm going to address both of these questions together. In regards to the the first one, I think we need to clarify the definitions a bit since "low-cost" and "high quality" are very ambiguous terms. They'll mean different things to different people. I've addressed the term "low-cost" in a previous post, where I think there should be less focus on cost and more on value. That means providing a clear benefit/s to the target customer. Cost is a dangerous game to play in where you don't really want a price war unless you have a clear strategy going into it.
In regards to "high quality", this can also mean many different things. To some, high quality means rugged, high reliability, or a long usable life. To others, it means good customer support, documentation, and training materials. In terms of reliability, no matter the cost, you need to have a test setup, more likely some automated test setup. This would be a minimum in terms of quality and QA. You can get customized test jigs made using bed-of-nails and toggle clamps or you can make them yourself. It's then up to you to create the test software to automate the testing as much as possible. I would consider this a standard QA procedure, regardless of whether it's open source or not.
In terms of quality, perhaps it could mean ruggedized which is highly dependent on the application. If it's going to be on an animal or in an environment where it will experience a lot of vibrational shock, then you'll need a vibration table or device to test it against to see where the statistical points of failure are. I've even used recycled massage vibration motors from motel beds to test parameter like this.
If it's going to potentially be deployed in the Antarctic or Sahara Desert, then you need to define a temperature range which covers these extremes and test for that. If you're selling your product at a cost that won't allow you to do this testing, or your customers aren't willing to pay for this kind of testing, what you can do is sell graded versions of your device. The standard version might have an operating range of 0 to 50 deg C which covers most applications. Then there can be ruggedized, graded, or premium versions which are tested from something like -30 to +85 deg C for harsher climates. These would usually require special environmental testing chambers which need to be rented or purchased.
It's also possible that you might need to use special parts for these such ICs which are graded for industrial use. Many ICs have a commercial version and industrial version. These particular devices should of course cost more since they require much more thought, testing time and effort, and also more expensive components.
No matter what, it's important to have documentation, support, and training materials for your products. Without these, it's unlikely you'll get much adoption. If you're selling things at a cost that doesn't value these things, then you probably have a pricing issue or you're focusing on the wrong types of customer. You don't want customers that only think about price above everything else.
So perhaps I would say that rather than looking at high quality vs low cost, I think it's more important to focus on high value, which means features that bring benefits to your customers. This only comes from working closely with the people using your device, listening to them, and incorporating their feedback.
15 April 2019 12:08am
Excellent Akiba,
Thank you for your detailed thoughts and for sharing your experiences.
Call for Papers: Data Mining and AI for Conservation Workshop at KDD 2019
15 April 2019 12:00am
Huge appetite for data trusts, according to new ODI research
15 April 2019 12:00am
Debate: Tech giants moving into conservation in the future
12 April 2019 12:20pm
12 April 2019 12:33pm
Interesting question. Dropping some replies you're already getting from @samrye and @Alasdair on Twitter here to help move the discussion along:
Thoughts... I have many.
Are you wondering about likelihood, or something else though?@Al2kA might have some musings...?
— Sam Rye (@sam__rye) April 12, 2019
It’s an interesting thing to think about the future players of conservation efforts. Data science will certainly be a driving force and who better to take a slice of the pie than tech monopolies?
— Spencer Dixon (@spencerldixon) April 12, 2019
This has already started with Microsoft appointing @lucasjoppa as Chief Environmental Officer. Private sector will take bigger steps into conservation.
— Spencer Dixon (@spencerldixon) April 12, 2019
There's definetly a rise in the big players exposing their tools for conservation use (Google's TensorFlow), but long-term in field commitment is their achilles heel. They still need NGOs & will predominently focus on big data that's eaiser to access (remote sensing vs in field)
— Alasdair Davies (@Al2kA) April 12, 2019
14 April 2019 1:43am
One concern I have is that just as tech companies tend to agglomerate into a monopoly, so too might thoughts regarding conservation. We might end up with a mental monoculture.
For instance, the popular wisdom at this time seems to be that we must priotitise the microplastic pollution problem, although some experts feel climate change is the more pressing issue. What can be tempting for a large company is to only concentrate on the thing they are best positioned to act upon. Given their pulpit and ubiquity, this view can become canon in the popular mind.
On the other hand, it's been commented that conservation efforts are so fragmented, that a powerful leader can unify these disparate NGOs under a common framework.
Suggestions or Preferences for content for this forum?
16 March 2019 3:27am
9 April 2019 6:00pm
Hey Akiba,
It would be great to have a conversation about what could be done in the field with IoT systems beyond virtual fencing and other current systems being implemented in conservation. Cases are great here but thinking beyond of what's the need and where could some creative thinking be applied to solve conservation problems. Thanks for getting this going!
Vance
12 April 2019 12:37am
That sounds awesome. Perhaps we start with that. Perhaps discussing some case studies of IoT being used outside of wildlife conservation (ie: enviornmental monitoring, etc), some theoretical applications of IoT that can be followed up with practical discussions on the implementation, or perhaps some hands on tutorials?
I'll start looking into some content ideas and please post anything you find, want to discuss, or would be more interested to hear about.
Akiba
12 April 2019 6:12pm
Sounds great!
3 May 2019 4:37pm
WildCRU Camera Trap Internships
WildCRU’s wide-spread and long-term camera trapping study spans South East Asia to West Africa to Scotland. Based at Tubney House, we are looking for early career undergraduate or masters students to work closely with our camera trapping co-ordinator to identify species and tag camera trap images using WildCRU’s camera trapping protocol. You will learn a variety of skills, attend WildCRU’s camera trapping workshop and have the opportunity to network with WildCRU’s international community.
Interns will be appointed for 3 month, usually on a part time basis, at £9 per hour, ideally starting 10th June. To apply, please send us a CV (no longer than 2 pages) and a covering letter detailing your experience to [email protected] and [email protected] by 24th May 2019.
More info: https://www.wildcru.org/opportunities/