Group

Acoustics / Feed

Acoustic monitoring is one of our biggest and most active groups, with members collecting, analysing, and interpreting acoustic data from across species, ecosystems, and applications, from animal vocalizations to sounds from our natural and built environment

event

How do I build bespoke conservation technology?

Nigel Butcher
Our sixth WILDLABS Tech Tutor is Nigel Butcher, who tackled the question: How do I build bespoke conservation technology? What are the key things I should think about/look out for? You can catch up on this tutorial on...

0
See full post
discussion

Help with analysing bat recordings from Audiomoth

Hi  I was hoping someone could point me in the right direction. First time poster....... I’m very much an enthusiastic amateur who is trying to improve the...

5 0

Hi Carlos 

Thank you for your message. I would quite like to send you some files. What's the best email address to send them to? 

Thanks 

Johnnie 

See full post
discussion

Tech Tutors: How do I scale up acoustic surveys with Audiomoths and automated processing?

Hi Wildlabbers,  It's almost time for our fourth Tech Tutors session tomorrow with Tessa Rhinehart, who will be tackling the question: How do I scale up...

1 0

Hi everyone,

Thanks for attending today's episode! You can find all of the collaborative notes at the link below, and we also encourage you to use this thread to connect and collaborate with the people you met in the chat.

https://notes.datawrapper.de/p/Tech_Tutors_Episode_4

We'll be posting the video and slides here tomorrow.

And as always, please use this thread to ask any follow-up questions you have for Tessa and the acoustic monitoring community!

-Ellie

See full post
discussion

Tech Tutors: How do I perform automated recordings of bird assemblages?

Hi Wildlabbers,  It's almost time for our third Tech Tutors session tomorrow with Carlos Abrahams, who will be tackling the question: How do I perform...

1 0

Hi everyone,

If anyone is looking for the episode's collaborative notes, you can find them here:

https://notes.datawrapper.de/p/Tech_Tutors_Episode_3

This doc features all the questions asked in this episode, as well as additional resources, participant introductions, and other helpful links.

-Ellie

See full post
funding

Competition: Cornell Birdcall Identification

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Put your acoustic monitoring skills to the test in The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Birdsong Identification Kaggle Competition. Participants will compete to identify as many bird vocalizations as possible in in...

0
See full post
event

How do I scale up acoustic surveys with Audiomoths?

Tessa Rhinehart
Our fourth WILDLABS Tech Tutor is Tessa Rhinehart, who tackled the question: How do I scale up acoustic surveys with Audiomoths and automated processing? You can catch up on this tutorial on our Youtube channel and read...

0
See full post
event

How do I perform automated recordings of bird assemblages?

Carlos Abrahams
Our third WILDLABS Tech Tutor is Carlos Abrahams, who tackled the question: How do I perform automated recordings of bird assemblages? You can catch up on this tutorial on our youtube channel and read through the...

0
See full post
event

How do I train my first machine learning model?

Daniel Situnayake
Our first WILDLABS Tech Tutor is Daniel Situnayake, who tackled the question: How do I train my first machine learning model?  To join one of our upcoming tutorials, visit the Tech Tutors series page. 

0
See full post
discussion

How are you using your Audiomoth?

The 'Audiomoth: Who wants to join a group buy?' case study in our Annual Report has been getting lots of positive attention. People seem to be particularly interested in...

5 0

I'm in North Somerset UK and have two AudioMoths.  I've adapted some waterproof cases which also can be locked and strapped onto a tree etc using a python cable.  This allow me to use them safely in semi-public spaces.  My interst is surveying for bats and recording them with the land owners.  I got interested in having a recorder, when helping to trap for nathusius' pipistrelle on a site I've know for 10 years - and just because I was out later than I normally survey we found not only nathusius' pipistrelle but a passing Lesser Horseshoe on my Petterson M500usb - so I decided to get some AudioMoths and play!

My Website is here 

As well as the points highlighted by Steph, Open Acoustic Devices are also running an online survey to capture the use of AudioMoth. To evaluate the global impact of open-source conservation technology, it is important to know how the technology is being used. This survey will go towards a human-computer interaction study into the usability of tech in conservation, and also used to evaluate the global impact of open-source conservation technology. AudioMoth is being used as a case study to identify best practises for open-source conservation technology development and accessibility. 

It would be great to keep sharing your experiences on this thread and if you have time here with our online survey. 

How do we get notified for the next group buy?

See full post
discussion

standards

Hello all, I am new to recording but have been learning about acousting environmental monitoring for several years now. Covid19 has me wanting to start recording more than ever...

0
See full post
event

WILDLABS Tech Tutors: Season One

WILDLABS Team
We've wrapped season one of Tech Tutors! Thank you to all of our Tutors, and to everyone who attended and made these episodes so exciting! You can find all of our episodes on the WILDLABS Youtube Channel, and find...

0
See full post
discussion

Audiograms- the range species can hear at

We are conducting a study looking for the auditory range of different species - the range at which they can sound. We have only found one authoritative source - ...

2 0

I'm a primatologist so can't say too much about other mammal taxa, but I believe this is the most comprehensive resource for primate audiograms--

Coleman, M. N. (2009). What do primates hear? A meta-analysis of all known nonhuman primate behavioral audiograms. International Journal of Primatology, 30(1), 55-91.

Hi Isla,

Range at which animals hear sounds depend on 4 things:

1) the frequency (pitch) of the sound of interest. As a rule of thumb, lower frequency sounds travel farther since high frequency sounds are subject to more absorption transmission losses.

2) the medium in which the sound is being transmitted in (i.e. sound travels at ~1500m/s in seawater and ~340m/s in air).

3) the audiogram of the animal (i.e. what frequencies CAN they hear), which Carly is referring to in the previous comment. 

There has been a lot of audiogram research on marine mammals. Find an overview and links to a handful of publications here: https://dosits.org/animals/effects-of-sound/measure-marine-mammals-reaction-to-sound/hearing-sensitivity-studies/ . This has also recently been explored in diving seabirds from SDU (university of southern denmark).

and 

4) the noise levels in the environment, as sounds can only be distinguished if they have some decent signal-to-noise ratio.

If you have any specific more questions, get in touch.

Cheers,

Chloe 

See full post
discussion

Any here used Cornell's Swift Recorder?

Hi everyone If you've used Cornell's Swift Recorder, I'd love to chat. In particular, I'm interested to hear people's experiences with battery life. It'...

4 0

Hi Daniella,

Yes, I have used SWIFT, SongMeter SM4, and Audiomoths. I find Swift to be the most energy efficient. They are also very affordable. Currently, they are my number one choice.  In reality, however, I would say that whether you use Swift over other sensors, particularly Audiomoths, would depend on the type of study you want to do and how often you can get to the sensors to replace batteries. Happy to talk about cons and pros if you want. Just send me an email here: [email protected].

Cheers,

David

Hello Daniella, 

We, WCS Mongolia, used lithium batteries for SWIFT recorders, the most of them still working in until now, since the last August.

At the Cornell SAW, they said alkanium battery will be working 27-44 days, and it depends on configuration sample rate.

We are configured 8K for sampling rate, and 24 hours recording.

Thanks,

Ochiroo

 

 

We used the following lithium batteries.

 

URL:

https://fortebattery.en.made-in-china.com/product/FBDEubqyfGhH/China-C-Size-Lithium-Batteries-Cr26500-Cr26500se-Er26500-Er26500m.html

See full post
discussion

Virtual Meetup Discussion: Acoustic Monitoring

Hi everyone.  We're a few hours away from our Acoustic Monitoring Virtual meetup. If you want to join us. there is still time to register here. We're at ~235...

3 0

Hi all,

I missed this, but just watched the virtual meeting recording.  Towards the end Stephanie mentioned there were many questions about recording multiple channels for localisation.  I hadn't thought there was that much interest in it.  Anyway my collaborator/client and I have been working on this off and on and slowly, but she did present some results she got at the recent conference in NZ.  If there is any interest I'll see if I can get her to give out her slides or something.

On another tack I'm interested in the experience of anyone who has done gunshot/blast fishing localisation.  In particular I'm curious about the algo used for detection and also for localisation.  I'm taking the matched filter approach for detection but am now wondering if maybe CNN classification might be better.

Finally I'm interested if anyone has ideas about implementing a LoRa mesh, or knows of a useable mesh layer.

Thanks,

-harold 

Where would I be able to find the recording of this virtual meetup? Thanks!

See full post
discussion

Prior work on Bird Flock identification

Hi there! We have a project underway called "Identi-Flock" which is an ambitious attempt to port our individual pollinator identification software, www.withymbe.info...

5 0

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

Just guessing but I don't think it will make much of a difference, individual or flock.  The spectrogramme will look much the same, and I think that is used as the input vector to the CNN.  If so then I would expect the model will be quite tolerant of flock size.  Just spitballing here though.

Hi Harold!

 

Great to know you are in the domain. To be honest my analysis so far indicates that when conducting a DSP approach on the spectrum, smoothing via convolution becomes an issue? Basically, the raw spectrum is too jagged to match, so one convolves it to smooth it, but then one just gets a generic "noise"-shaped spectrum. I also have variances in sampled spectra from the same source recording? I am using an fs=44100 and a spectrum 0 - 64kHz initially, or though I tried to filter from 100 - 9k with little success?

My design outline is: I need to identify the presence of a flock of a certain species of avians, I need to know when the flock is not present, and I need to distinguish the presence of other flocks of birds, not to identify them, but they are sometimes similar in size and possibly, therefore, call range? A sort of "We - Not We" approach?

I am comparing the gestalt sound, not individual calls?

Plus: I am using a Rapsberry Pi for the Fog Node currently, but see that I can use my Arduino Uno for TinyML from the examples which use a Nano? I am interested in the power-saving, but need a robust microphone rig, which I currently get via usb?

I will checkout your tutorial, many thanks!

Tally ho!

Andrew.

See full post
article

Enter the Zooniverse: Try Citizen Science for Yourself!

Ellie Warren
Trapped inside during the COVID-19 quarantine and looking to engage with conservation science without leaving your desk? Citizen science projects like those on Zooniverse offer a great opportunity to impact scientific...

0
See full post
discussion

Success recording bees using AudioMoth

I would just like to put on record that we have successfully tested an AudioMoth recording "bug" in a local garden inside a plastic bag whereby it recorded the buzz of...

1 0

How can we learn more about your BEESWAX7 buzz identification and counting program, and discuss working together?

See full post
article

#Tech4Wildlife 2020 Photo Challenge In Review

WILDLABS Team
2020 marked our fifth year holding our annual #Tech4Wildlife Photo Challenge, and our community made it a milestone to remember. Conservationists took to Twitter last week to share their best high-tech snapshots from...

0
See full post
article

Listening to Nature: The Emerging Field of Bioacoustics

Adam Welz
Researchers are increasingly placing microphones in forests and other ecosystems to monitor birds, insects, frogs, and other animals. As the technology advances and becomes less costly, proponents argue, bioacoustics is...

0
See full post
event

Workshop: Using Bioacoustics for Field Survey

CIEEM
CIEEM is hosting a one-day workshop in bioacoustic field survey methods at a beginning to intermediate level. Attendees will attend hands-on workshops, lectures, and computer sessions giving an overview on using...

0
See full post
event

WILDLABS Virtual Meetup Recording: Acoustic Monitoring

WILDLABS Team
The fourth and final event in Season 3 of the WILDLABS Virtual Meetup Series is now available to watch, along with notes that highlight key takeaways from the talks and discussion. In the meetup, speakers David Watson, ...

0
See full post
event

Acoustic Telemetry Workshop Series

Ocean Tracking Network
Ocean Tracking Network and ideasOTN are hosting an acoustic telemetry workshop in Halifax in February 2020 to assist early career researchers to develop skills and build their toolbox. Topics include deployment, YAPS...

0
See full post
discussion

Machine-readable representation of a sensor duty cycle / recording schedule

My group is currently trying to improve the database we use to store our recordings, and we're trying to figure out how to represent a sensor's duty cycle in a way that is...

1 0

Hi David,

I use cron-like patterns.  One form looks something like: mon,wed-sun 0-23:0-59/10 90

which means every day but Tuesdays, every 10 minutes from the top of the hour, recording for 90 seconds.  There is a similar form for matching by month/day.  There could be yet another form for sunrise/sunset but I haven't implemented that.  Basically a hyphen indicates a range, a comma indicates a list, and the slash is repetition step size.  A full recording specification consists of one or more patterns, the first matching being used (for the recording duration).  Years are not implemented but that could be done also.

Thanks,

-harold

See full post