Acoustic sensors enable efficient and non-invasive monitoring of a wide range of species, including many that are difficult to monitor in other ways. Although they were initially limited in application scope largely due to cost and hardware constraints, the development of low-cost, open-source models like the Audiomoth in recent years has increased access immensely and opened up new avenues of research. For example, some teams are using them to identify illicit human activities through the detection of associated sounds, like gunshots, vehicles, or chainsaws (e.g. OpenEars).
With this relatively novel dimension of wildlife monitoring rapidly advancing in both marine and terrestrial systems, it is crucial that we identify and share information about the utility and constraints of these sensors to inform efforts. A recent study identified advancements in hardware and machine learning applications, as well as early development of acoustic biodiversity indicators, as factors facilitating progress in the field. In terms of limitations, the authors highlight insufficient reference sound libraries, a lack of open-source audio processing tools, and a need for standardization of survey and analysis protocols. They also stress the importance of collaboration in moving forward, which is precisely what this group will aim to facilitate.
If you're new to acoustic monitoring and want to get up to speed on the basics, check out these beginner's resources and conversations from across the WILDLABS platform:
Three Resources for Beginners:
- Listening to Nature: The Emerging Field of Bioacoustics, Adam Welz
- Ecoacoustics and Biodiversity Monitoring, RSEC Journal
- Monitoring Ecosystems through Sound: The Present and Future of Passive Acoustics, Ella Browning and Rory Gibb
Three Forum Threads for Beginners:
- AudioMoth user guide | Tessa Rhinehart
- Audiomoth and Natterjack Monitoring (UK) | Stuart Newson
- Help with analysing bat recordings from Audiomoth | Carlos Abrahams
Three Tutorials for Beginners:
- "How do I perform automated recordings of bird assemblages?" | Carlos Abrahams, Tech Tutors
- "How do I scale up acoustic surveys with Audiomoths and automated processing?" | Tessa Rhinehart, Tech Tutors
- Acoustic Monitoring | David Watson, Ruby Lee, Andy Hill, and Dimitri Ponirakis, Virtual Meetups
Want to know more about acoustic monitoring and learn from experts in the WILDLABS community? Jump into the discussion in our Acoustic Monitoring group!
Header image: Carly Batist
- @chmod000
- | he/they
I build sensing and perceiving hardware that is designed to address issues that matter to me. That ranges from assistive technologies, to conservation ecology, and connecting individuals with place and each other.
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- @ARobillard
- | He/Him
A conservation data scientist and field ecologist with broad interest in the application of machine learning and population genetics to the conservation of threatened species. Alex has conducted field studies throughout central and south America, the Caribbean, and North America.
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- @pbull
- | he/him
DrivenData
Engineer and AI for Good leader working on bringing machine learning tools to social impact organizations.
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St. Lawrence University
Professor of Biology at St. Lawrence University
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- @SamuelHertz
- | He/Him/His
I'm a PhD researcher at Royal Holloway University of London (Centre for GeoHumanities) researching modalities of sound-sensing technologies across climate and conservation sciences. Interested in ethics and histories of acoustic monitoring as well as new visualization methods.
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- @AliceMuller
- | she/her
I am an environmental scientist working in international community development and community led ecosystem restoration
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- 4 Groups
- @EliThore
- | He/Him
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
I am a biologist with a broad interest in how the environment affects the behaviour and ecology of wildlife. I also like seeking creative and practical solutions to reduce our impact on the environment.
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PhD Student working on acoustics and hunting in tropical forests
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- 3 Groups
- @Theresa
- | she/her/hers
- 0 Resources
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- 3 Groups
- @Andrew_Hill
- | He/Him
Open Acoustic Devices
I am co-founder of Open Acoustic Devices, the creators of AudioMoth and HydroMoth. My background is Electronic Engineering and Computer Science.
- 0 Resources
- 5 Discussions
- 2 Groups
- @alex_rogers
- | He/him/his
University of Oxford
I am a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford where I work on developing novel low-cost conservation technology (including AudioMoth and SnapperGPS).
- 0 Resources
- 14 Discussions
- 3 Groups
TBC is looking for an applicant to lead on the design, analysis and reporting of data from a wide range of innovative bat population monitoring surveys with a particular focus on passive acoustic monitoring, undertake...
24 April 2024
Full-time 3 year postdoctoral fellowship in Escondido, CA
22 April 2024
In a recent publication we tested Underwater Passive Acoustic Monitoring (UPAM) as a feasible non-invasive technique to study the calling behavior of therathened aquatic Andean frogs under natural conditions in the...
6 April 2024
What can soundscapes tell us about ecosystem functioning and health? We are looking to hire a postdoctoral researcher in ecoacoustics for Nature Recovery at Oxford
2 April 2024
Hussey Labs seeks a senior post-doctoral researcher/senior research associate for movement ecology of Greenland halibut in the context of fisheries management across Baffin Bay-Davis Strait, Eastern Canadian Arctic.
13 March 2024
Catch up on the conservation tech discussions and events that happened during World Wildlife Day 2024!
7 March 2024
Do you know anyone interested in this position? Let them know by sharing widely.
27 February 2024
The Ecological Acoustics and Behavior Lab at the University of New Hampshire seeks a PhD student to join our lab to investigate how forest habitat affects moose occupancy and soundscape in northern New Hampshire
13 February 2024
The primary focus of the research is to explore how red deer movements, space use, habitat selection and foraging behaviour change during the wolf recolonization process.
10 February 2024
Applications open for a PhD position in plant vibroacoustics at the University of Southampton
8 February 2024
We demonstrate the power of using passive acoustic monitoring & machine learning to survey species, using ruffed lemurs in southeastern Madagascar as an example.
23 January 2024
Come join our team! We're looking for a Program Officer to join the WILDLABS Community, hosted by WCS in Argentina. This role will support our research program, with the chosen candidate leading our horizon scanning...
22 January 2024
June 2024
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Also some other bat experts I'd recommend reaching out to, if you haven't already (for this and any bat acoustic questions) - Adrià López-Baucells, Nils Bouillard, Kate Jones,... |
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Acoustics | 3 minutes 49 seconds ago | |
If you have the resources, I would suggest testing the sensitivity and directionality of the system at relevant frequencies both with and without an external mic, and let the... |
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Acoustics | 11 hours 44 minutes ago | |
Thanks for the reply. I'm curious to hear more about your friend's issues with this set up! |
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Acoustics, Biologging | 1 day 13 hours ago | |
Thank you Robyn. Sure I will send more information to your email |
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Citizen Science, Acoustics, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Human-Wildlife Conflict | 6 days 16 hours ago | |
Hey Sol, No problem at all. Depending on your configuration, the Audiomoth software would have to work on a PCB with an ESP32 chip which is the unit on the audiomoth/... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Data management and processing tools, Emerging Tech, Sustainable Fishing Challenges | 1 week 2 days ago | |
Totally agree.Inititally sceptical until I saw Helena and Graeme were involved.MJ |
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Acoustics, Citizen Science, Community Base, Human-Wildlife Conflict | 1 week 4 days ago | |
Thanks Carly! I will keep anyone interested in this project posted on this platform. Cheers |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation | 1 week 6 days ago | |
'Most importantly, we have to make it play a MIDI version of the DoctorWho theme song when you arm the device. That has to be the #1 feature if you ask me!' Seconded! |
+9
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Acoustics, Biologging, Emerging Tech, Open Source Solutions, Sensors | 2 weeks ago | |
Awesome project!! |
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Acoustics | 2 weeks 5 days ago | |
This is so cool @Mauricio_Akmentins - congrats and look forward to seeing your project evolve! |
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Acoustics, Biologging, Climate Change, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Data management and processing tools, Emerging Tech, Open Source Solutions, Protected Area Management Tools, Sensors, Software and Mobile Apps | 3 weeks 2 days ago | |
Congrats @MattyD797 and team!!! We do a lot of work in the underwater bioacoustic realm and your tool certainly seems like it would be a great instrumental addition to the... |
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Acoustics, Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Marine Conservation, Protected Area Management Tools, Sustainable Fishing Challenges | 3 weeks 2 days ago | |
We've deployed passive acoustic monitors in various urban environments without any issues of theft, even in locations where camera traps and other technology has been historically... |
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Acoustics | 3 weeks 4 days ago |
How do I use animal-borne imaging technology in marine and terrestrial environments?
16 August 2021 12:00am
Webinar: Bioacoustics and Engagement
19 July 2021 12:00am
WILDLABS Tech Tutors: Season 3
6 July 2021 12:00am
Kickstarter for Terra acoustic monitoring project
4 June 2021 4:09pm
GroupGets: μMoth Now Available
27 May 2021 12:00am
Tools similar to BirdNet for analyzing avian recordings?
13 May 2020 5:03pm
7 May 2021 6:51pm
Dear Thomas I'm really interested by your experience, how did you use birdnet?
I would like to monitor a area for a certain amount of time with birdnet automatically identifying the bird around, is it possible to do that? Or did you record a sound bird for a while, then transfer the audio file into bird net and manually identify each bird sound?
All the best, Antoine
11 May 2021 9:25pm
Tessa Rhinehart has developed a great compilation of bioacoustic analysis platforms, software, etc. with basic functionality on each. It's openly-available on Github -https://github.com/rhine3/audiomoth-guide/blob/master/resources/analysis-software.md.
I personally use RavenPro (from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology), Kaleidoscope (from Wildlife Acoustics), and Arbimon (from Rainforest Connection) in different capacities. I've also heard good things about PAMguard (developed firstly in the marine mammal community) and Sonic Visualizer.
BirdNET on local Windows machine?
18 September 2020 9:44am
26 October 2020 3:29pm
Got it running on Linux now.
9 May 2021 2:49pm
Dear Robin,
So what is your workflow regarding the utilisation of birdnet to analyse sound bird?
All the best,
10 May 2021 8:13am
Dear Antoine,
collect sound data (.wav) with the audiorecorder (audiomoth) of your choice.
Point the script https://github.com/kahst/BirdNET-Lite to the location of
your data storage (MicroSD) attached to the Linux machine, wait one day and see the magic happen ;-)
Greetings,
Robin
Recommendations for a waterproof microphone for bats and birds?
20 April 2021 9:01am
26 April 2021 7:30am
Thank you, Akiba! If we go down the road of constructing the outer casing ourselves, we will consider this advice! Right now we were hoping a bit more for an off the shelf model.
Cheers!
26 April 2021 11:59am
No problem. Good luck with your project :)
Akiba
7 May 2021 2:06pm
I didn't see this post until the digest came out, but if you still need some comments...
I suggest asking this question on one of the sound recordists forums. The people on [email protected] are generally quite knowledgeable on microphones and protecting them...and quite friendly :) Ivano Pelicella (Dodotronics) monitors that forum and will happy to chime in if you have a question on their mics. Or you can email him.
Regarding the Momimic...it uses the Knowles FG23629, but I see what you mean about the lack of much specs. This is their datasheet, if you don't have it - https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/knowles/FG-23629-D65/810005
The Momimic seems like a good choice for what you described and it's off the shelf, although I haven't used it personally. Maybe email Ivano for some help.
Good luck! I hope you will be posting your progress and results!
Reducing wind noise in AudioMoth recordings
23 June 2020 2:26am
23 June 2020 2:40am
Hi Daniella,
I don't know specifically about AudioMoth, but people have had very good results reducing or eliminating wind noice on things like GoPros or iPhones, etc. using simple Microphone Windscreen foam. You can buy ones for headsets and the like pretty cheap (10 for $1 for the little ones). You can just cut them up and either tape them in place on the inside of the case or rubber band them on the outside.
Also, if the sounds you are trying to extract are still audible, but hard to pull out of the noise, you might also be able to post-process the wind noise out. Wind tends to be heavy in low frequencies, so depending on what you are looking for you might be able to just filter the lower frequencies out, or use an open source tool like Audacity. But if your signal is buried deep within the noise, these tools might also corrupt your target signal.
Hope this helps.
Drue
29 June 2020 5:55pm
I second what Drue said on both fronts. Using a windscreen for any microphone is really helpful in reducing wind interference. For the Audiomoth's size, you could probably use a lavalier mic windscreen of some sort inside your case. I post-process wind interference out sometimes using bandpass filters in RavenPro (cutting out low frequencies <1kHz usually gets most of it at the site I work at) but this will depend on the frequencies of your target sounds.
28 April 2021 8:39pm
furry "dead cat" covers and blimps work best for cutting down wind noise, and a very good spectral noise repair tool, though it's paid, iZotope RX8. There is a de-wind module, but you can also teach it what to repair. I believe Davinci Resolve and Adobe Audition might also have wind reduction tools, but my go-to is iZotope RX8.
New Papers: Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation
22 April 2021 12:00am
Webinar: Mission Possible: Deployment
21 April 2021 12:00am
Webinar: Acoustic Tag Technologies and Applications
20 April 2021 12:00am
BirdCLEF 2021 Kaggle Challenge
19 April 2021 12:00am
Webinar Series
14 April 2021 1:38pm
Organize audio files by frequency
6 February 2021 3:58am
28 February 2021 12:22am
This may not be immediately useful, but I really like this interactive visualisation of bird calls organised by similarity (requires a desktop browser to run the experiment):
https://experiments.withgoogle.com/bird-sounds
They do provide the source code so it may be possible recreate this with your data, but it does seem daunting. One thing to note with these similarity measurements is the pattern or clustering is dependent on the input data. The outcome of this is you may end up with a very different order and pattern with only a sligltyly different set of input data.
18 March 2021 7:00pm
As Carlos mentioned, the R packages would be good if you're just looking for summary stats averaged over the whole 10s of the fiie. You would just read that directory into R and load seewave, tuneR, warbleR (I think monitoR may also have this functionality). Perhaps helpful links -
seewave - http://rug.mnhn.fr/seewave/
tuner - https://rdrr.io/rforge/tuneR/
warbler - https://marce10.github.io/warbleR/
9 April 2021 3:55pm
I'm assuming that by "sort by frequencies" you mean the frequency of the call itself, not the frequency of the audio recording (for example, a call at 1KHz vs a recording at a sample rate of 48KHz). My recommendation would be to use R (seewave/tuneR) to generate mean spectra of the recordings (meanspec function) and you can then use those mean spectra to figure out the peak frequency range and sort by that.
Survey Invite: Open-source acoustic monitoring technology
9 April 2021 12:00am
The 2021 #Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge: Community Highlights
25 March 2021 12:00am
Take the survey: your needs and priorities for (open-source) acoustic monitoring technology
25 February 2021 12:45pm
22 March 2021 11:29pm
Hey everyone, only 5 DAYS LEFT to take the survey! We’re just short of 100 respondents now, and would be great to get as much coverage as possible! Please consider responding if you haven’t done so already, and spread to your contacts who might be interested.
Responses so far show a clear support for the open-source option for acoustic monitoring technology. Almost 70% would be willing to spend time or resources to learn (or have someone in their team learning) the skills that allow you to customise open-source acoustic devices. More than half thought it would be useful to have a “developer version” of an acoustic device (that you can tinker with, and integrate/connect to other devices).
Please contribute your thoughts to help the acoustic community design the open-source monitoring technology of the future!
24 March 2021 4:13am
Hi everyone, we’ve decided to extend the survey for 3 more weeks, until the 18th of April!
That will be the final date (the online survey tool we use is not free, and we’ve got budget limitations :-)
We’re now over 100 respondents from all continents, but we do have significant gaps (e.g. SE Asia and China, many parts of Africa) which we would love to cover. There is also a slight bias towards terrestrial acoustics (only 18% report working in aquatic habitats), but this might just reflect the number of people working in terrestrial vs aquatic acoustics generally. In any case, would also love to get more respondents from the wet side of life. Please participate and spread to your contacts.
And big thanks to those of you who’ve already participated!!
Advice on a Master's project
4 August 2020 2:07pm
10 March 2021 8:03pm
Yes. The key output for synchronisation is the pulse per second (PPS) output which is synchronised very accurately to UTC. The TX from the GPS module is then useful for reading the time and positions. You generally don't need to be able to send commands to the module as most of the time the default settings are fine.
10 March 2021 8:03pm
Yes. The key output for synchronisation is the pulse per second (PPS) output which is synchronised very accurately to UTC. The TX from the GPS module is then useful for reading the time and positions. You generally don't need to be able to send commands to the module as most of the time the default settings are fine.
18 March 2021 5:26pm
Hi Harry (and all)
Just wanted to share some potentially relevant papers that I've come across, in case you haven't found them already. Coming more from the ecology/conservation focused side of conservation tech, but potentially of use to see what's actually been deployed out there!
Yip, D. A., Knight, E. C., Haave‐Audet, E., Wilson, S. J., Charchuk, C., Scott, C. D., ... & Bayne, E. M. (2020). Sound level measurements from audio recordings provide objective distance estimates for distance sampling wildlife populations. Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation, 6(3), 301-315. https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/rse2.118.
Abadi, S. H., Wacker, D. W., Newton, J. G., & Flett, D. (2019). Acoustic localization of crows in pre-roost aggregations. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 146(6), 4664-4671. https://asa.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1121/1.5138133.
Spillmann, B., van Noordwijk, M. A., Willems, E. P., Mitra Setia, T., Wipfli, U., & van Schaik, C. P. (2015). Validation of an acoustic location system to monitor Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii) long calls. American Journal of Primatology, 77(7), 767-776. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajp.22398.
Kershenbaum, A., Owens, J. L., & Waller, S. (2019). Tracking cryptic animals using acoustic multilateration: A system for long-range wolf detection. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 145(3), 1619-1628. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5092973.
Stinco, P., Tesei, A., Dreo, R., & Micheli, M. (2021). Detection of envelope modulation and direction of arrival estimation of multiple noise sources with an acoustic vector sensor. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 149(3), 1596-1608. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0003628.
Rhinehart, T. A., Chronister, L. M., Devlin, T., & Kitzes, J. (2020). Acoustic localization of terrestrial wildlife: Current practices and future opportunities. Ecology and Evolution, 10(13), 6794-6818. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ece3.6216.
Funding Opportunity: COVID-19 Science Fund
10 March 2021 12:00am
Sound library for small terrestrial mammals
31 January 2021 1:42pm
12 February 2021 6:05pm
Stuart, that is really cool! Are these clips translated into audible frequency range?
12 February 2021 8:26pm
Hi Phil, the playable spectrograms have been translated into the audible frequency range (by playing in 10 x time expansion), becuase the small mammal calls are mainly above our hearing range, but a copy of the original wav files can be downloaded from the web site.
12 February 2021 9:15pm
Ah, perfect. I was wondering why I never hear those calls!
That's really nice work, thanks so much for sharing!
How do I strategically allocate drones for conservation?
8 February 2021 12:00am
Audiomoth and Natterjack Monitoring (UK)
23 December 2020 8:16pm
31 January 2021 2:09pm
Hi Sarah, I'm curently working on the sound identification of native and introduced frogs in the UK. I need another season of recordings, and a lot more recordings of Natterjack's, but my aim is to build these into the BTO Acoustic Pipeline hopefully later this year - alongside bats, small mammals, bush-crickets etc to also identify these automatically when they are recorded as 'by-catch.' https://www.bto.org/pipeline.
31 January 2021 3:26pm
Hi Stuart, What sample rate do you think you could go down to? We're interested in a low-power AudioMoth firmware version for this application. Alex
31 January 2021 4:38pm
Hi Alex, I'm not sure what problems there could be with aliasiing and harmonics using a low sample rate, and may depend I guess on how the recordings are processed later on, but I've enclosed a spectrogram of a typical recording below, and can send you some example recordings if useful. Perhaps to use a sample rate of about 10 kHz.., but it's not something that I think about - I always use an excessive sample rate (24 kHz for anurans).
BTO Acoustic Pipeline - is launched!
31 January 2021 1:37pm
EarthHz tool
29 January 2021 3:39pm
warbleR / R packages for bioacoustics forum
2 December 2020 11:45am
4 December 2020 3:21pm
Hi all!
Just as a general resource, @tessa.rhinehart has a really awesome table of different bioacoustic software and R packages with their varied functionality: https://github.com/rhine3/audiomoth-guide/blob/master/resources/analysis-software.md.
I haven't worked with warbleR directly, but I've played around in monitoR and gibbonR for passive acoustic monitoring analyses.
You might also just reach out to Marcelo (writer of the package) and ask directly...
Happy coding!
Carly
20 December 2020 2:10am
I used the package soundecology in R: URL: http://ljvillanueva.github.io/soundecology/ and https://cran.r-project.org/package=soundecology
This package helps to calculate several acoustic index using .WAV files. Is possible to analyses several files as same time.
Best regards!
17 January 2021 6:44pm
Hi all thanks for the answers!
Carly - thanks, will have to try yours. I did the course at the Organisation of Tropical Studies with Marcelo, which was awesome, but this is not something he's keen on answering, I think he has other ways of doing it. Sorting it out on Github atm. Hope your moving terabytes of data is going well :)
domingos - thank you, I do know about this one, but having a selection table in warbleR opens up to a lot of various other options that can be really useful. Will keep you updated.
Thanks
Axel
Workshop: Analyses of acoustic telemetry data with R
15 January 2021 12:00am
Analyzing sounds of flying insects
17 December 2020 2:08pm
18 December 2020 6:14pm
this guys has been around a long and has some neat stuff http://songsofinsects.com/about
but sure looks like a wide-open area of research ...
4 January 2021 12:26pm
Tom Dally at Leeds University UK is doing work in this area. I dont think he has anything published yet but his preliminary results are interesting (saw them at a workshop).
https://biologicalsciences.leeds.ac.uk/school-of-biology/pgr/753/thomas-dally
Tom
Tech Tutors: How do I use pattern matching analysis to label acoustic data with RFCxArbimon?
17 December 2020 3:31pm
17 December 2020 9:22pm
Thanks everybody for joining today's session! I've attached the article here that describes Pattern Matching in greater detail to respond to some of the questions from today's session.
Also, here is a link to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Service for the individual who had questions about GDPR. Feel free to contact us at [email protected] with any other questions about the platform or Pattern Matching in general!
23 December 2020 3:21am
Zephyr and Marconi, thanks for the great talk and your hard work that made this platform available to the public!! I'm experimenting with the pattern matching function to create some training data but have issues trying to get the "Jobs'' to run. I only have 18 files for each of these tests, but only 1 processed to 11.1% while two others stay at 0%. The internet connection was briefly interrupted when I created the first job and was fine later on. I can only Hide, not delete or re-run these jobs, so I'm not sure what to do. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!
23 December 2020 3:27pm
Hi @pmnguyen1224 , thanks for reaching out and checking out the system! We would love to help ensure that you're able to get pattern matching to work for you! I do have a few questions for you so we can replicate issue you are experiencing. Would you mind emailing us a couple screenshots and your original message above at [email protected] to get started? Or feel free to send us a chat if that's easier, by clicking on the chat icon on https://arbimon.rfcx.org/. Looking forward to supporting you moving forward!
How do I use pattern matching analysis to label acoustic data with RFCx Arbimon?
8 December 2020 12:00am
24 April 2021 8:50am
Almost a year since the original post, but just commenting that I've been having some pretty good success with BirdNET which has been working fine in the past few weeks I've been using it.