Hi Andrew,

Dan here—I'm one of the authors of the TinyML book! I love your Withymbe project; I've previously done work involving embedded systems and insects, and it's interesting to hear about your plans for bird flocks.

As long as you have sufficient data, you should be able to identify different bird sounds and discern them from background noise. The TinyML book has a chapter that introduces the underlying techniques, and I'd also recommend taking a look at www.edgeimpulse.com - we've built a set of tools designed to make it easy to train these types of models.

We actually recently published a tutorial on Wildlabs about this very concept:

https://www.wildlabs.net/resources/case-studies/tutorial-train-tinyml-model-can-recognize-sounds-using-only-23-kb-ram

I'm always excited to learn about new applications; feel free to reach out if there's any way we can help. I'm [email protected].

Warmly,
Dan

We've had good results with two mono inputs accepted via the stereo 1/4" input jack on the Pisound HAT on a 3B+ and just about to test with the 4. Details and links to Pisound folks in Lithuania here -- http://www.orcasound.net/2018/04/27/orcasounds-new-live-audio-solution-from-hydrophone-to-headphone-with-a-raspberry-pi-computer-and-hls-dash-streaming-software/

Hi Sam,

have you tried the Clippy EM172 ? I was looking at this microphone on Raspberry Pi + PiSound, but it has an electret capsule and should then be powered...

Thank you !

@jankees,  

Hi I am working on a system to reduce Human Elephant Conflict and am interested in acoustics of Elephants and the identification of elephants through their acoustic signature to assist with this project, did you get anywhere with the serval sensor for detecting Elephants? 

We are a non profit called the Forgotten Parks Foundation and currently managing the Upemba and Kundelungu National Parks in the DR.Congo and have an immediate requirement to reduce HEC so we would like to assist with the development of such a system. 

That also sounds like a good idea :)

Hi Tessa. 

Thanks and also thanks for being so generous with your work :)

Regarding the format, how do you all think if we have a single document and a wiki? I could handle the single document if David wanted to do the wiki. One potential issue would be synchronization, but since many wikis keep a change list, perhaps we can schedule periodic document updates based on the wiki changelists. We can also maintain a document changelist in case the changes need to go in the other direction.

Any comments or suggestions?

Akiba

Hello Carlos and Sam
That book on "CCTV for Wildlife Monitoring" looks excellent. Although it is somewhat off at a tangent of my actual work this looks way too useful not to have. There are cheaper second-hand copies on Abebooks and eBay and also on sale at NHBS, £20.98 incl. UK P&P (https://www.nhbs.com/cctv-for-wildlife-monitoring-book).

An interesting interview with the author, Susan Young: https://blog.nhbs.com/author-interviews/interview/cctv-for-wildlife-monitoring-an-interview-with-susan-young/

Meanwhile, I have come across a research project by the author of that book using technology that looks very close to what Sam is trying to do: "CCTV Enables the Discovery of New Barbastelle Vocalisations and Activity Patterns Near a Roost - We monitored a barbastelle maternity roost for four months using a portable CCTV system, time synchronised with ultrasound recorders."
See more here: https://www.researchgate.net/project/Using-CCTV-to-link-vocal-repertoire-with-behaviour-in-bats

If the above does not do it, I think you should contact the author and get her advice on what would be a suitable setup for you. That's what I meant in my earlier post about maximising use of previously developed solutions. It will just save you a lot of messing about, especially if you are not a technical expert yourself.

I hope this is of some use. Do post an update when you have worked out what equipment to use.

Good luck,
Joachim Neff