With new technologies revolutionizing data collection, wildlife researchers are becoming increasingly able to collect data at much higher volumes than ever before. Now we are facing the challenges of putting this information to use, bringing the science of big data into the conservation arena. With the help of machine learning tools, this area holds immense potential for conservation practices. The applications range from online trafficking alerts to species-specific early warning systems to efficient movement and biodiversity monitoring and beyond.
However, the process of building effective machine learning tools depends upon large amounts of standardized training data, and conservationists currently lack an established system for standardization. How to best develop such a system and incentivize data sharing are questions at the forefront of this work. There are currently multiple AI-based conservation initiatives, including Wildlife Insights and WildBook, that are pioneering applications on this front.
This group is the perfect place to ask all your AI-related questions, no matter your skill level or previous familiarity! You'll find resources, meet other members with similar questions and experts who can answer them, and engage in exciting collaborative opportunities together.
Just getting started with AI in conservation? Check out our introduction tutorial, How Do I Train My First Machine Learning Model? with Daniel Situnayake, and our Virtual Meetup on Big Data. If you're coming from the more technical side of AI/ML, Sara Beery runs an AI for Conservation slack channel that might be of interest. Message her for an invite.
Header Image: Dr Claire Burke / @CBurkeSci
Explore the Basics: AI
Understanding the possibilities for incorporating new technology into your work can feel overwhelming. With so many tools available, so many resources to keep up with, and so many innovative projects happening around the world and in our community, it's easy to lose sight of how and why these new technologies matter, and how they can be practically applied to your projects.
Machine learning has huge potential in conservation tech, and its applications are growing every day! But the tradeoff of that potential is a big learning curve - or so it seems to those starting out with this powerful tool!
To help you explore the potential of AI (and prepare for some of our upcoming AI-themed events!), we've compiled simple, key resources, conversations, and videos to highlight the possibilities:
Three Resources for Beginners:
- Everything I know about Machine Learning and Camera Traps, Dan Morris | Resource library, camera traps, machine learning
- Using Computer Vision to Protect Endangered Species, Kasim Rafiq | Machine learning, data analysis, big cats
- Resource: WildID | WildID
Three Forum Threads for Beginners:
- I made an open-source tool to help you sort camera trap images | Petar Gyurov, Camera Traps
- Batch / Automated Cloud Processing | Chris Nicolas, Acoustic Monitoring
- Looking for help with camera trapping for Jaguars: Software for species ID and database building | Carmina Gutierrez, AI for Conservation
Three Tutorials for Beginners:
- How do I get started using machine learning for my camera traps? | Sara Beery, Tech Tutors
- How do I train my first machine learning model? | Daniel Situnayake, Tech Tutors
- Big Data in Conservation | Dave Thau, Dan Morris, Sarah Davidson, Virtual Meetups
Want to know more about AI, or have your specific machine learning questions answered by experts in the WILDLABS community? Make sure you join the conversation in our AI for Conservation group!
British Antarctic Survey (BAS)
Machine learning researcher at the British Antarctic Survey
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- @womble
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AI Researcher, mostly NLP, with 30+ years experience. Recently consulted for a company doing drone image analysis and Google Cloud
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- @capreolus
- | he/him
Capreolus e.U.
wildlife biologist with capreolus.at
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- @affiliatepurna
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Purna Man Shrestha is a program coordinator of mountain spirit, Nepal. He has 6 years of working experience in human wildlife interaction focusing on wildcats, and conflicts. He has a good knowledge on wildlife survey techniques, field survey, stakeholder engagement
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- @Edonga
- | He/His
Paul Edonga is from the Indigenous Pastoralist Tribes of Northern Kenya. A seasoned Leader in indigenous-led conservation of Endangered Beisa Oryx, African Small Antelopes their habitats & Dryland Forests. He's the founder of Save Beisa Oryx Community Resilience Trust-SBOC
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Msc student on wildlife management and conservation
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Ol Pejeta Conservancy
Deputy Technology Manager
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- @CathyNj
- | She
Catherine Njore is a seasoned Cartographer with over 17yrs experience and specializing in children cartography. She recently designed a Cartography: Fun with Maps Program(CFMP); a program that assists children to learn how to draw, read and use maps effectively.
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Holder of BSc in Applied Zoology. Ecologist at Ruaha National park
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An Environmental sciences and Management graduate from SUA, passionate and eager to drive change to the Environment, making World a better place for present and future generations.
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Addax Data Science
Wildlife ecologist with a special interest in machine learning
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- @Adrien_Pajot
- | He/His
WILDLABS & Fauna & Flora
Hi! I am Adrien, a dedicated French ornithologist and engineer committed to biodiversity conservation. I joined the WILDLABS team as a project manager in October 2023!
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Careers
The Senior Conservation Technology Specialist will be responsible for providing technical advice and capacity development to GWP project teams on conservation technology, distilling challenges and lessons from project...
22 September 2022
Amazon Sustainability is welcoming proposals related to climate risk/resilience, life cycle assessment, circular strategies, and more. Selected PIs receive unrestricted funds, no more than $80,000 USD on average
20 September 2022
As UNGA begins, Google.org is committing $25M to accelerate progress towards the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Applications are now open for nonprofits and social enterprises.
16 September 2022
IBM Research Scientists are charting the future of Artificial Intelligence, creating breakthroughs in quantum computing, discovering how blockchain will reshape the enterprise, and much more. Join a team that is...
16 September 2022
Join my brand new group at MIT in Fall 2023!!
12 September 2022
Careers
The BirdNet team are seeking to fill three roles, including an Ecologist, Data scientist and an Embedded Systems Engineer based in Germany.
9 September 2022
At the Inria Sophia Antipolis - Méditerranée center. The project will pursue two different methodological goals: (1) explore the use of natural language bottlenecks describing visible traits or other visual...
1 September 2022
This is the first in a series by David Thau on the promise and challenges to using AI and machine learning to create a planetary environmental management system.
31 August 2022
Article
APPLY NOW! The Sovereign Nature Initiative has partnered with the Kenya Wildlife Trust to experiment with emerging technologies to support their predators' conservation work.Challenges will focus on:1. Lion...
30 August 2022
This project is part of the Conservation AI Network. We aim to help threatened species & manage invasive species using leading edge analytics and artificial intelligence algorithms. The primary purpose of the...
29 August 2022
Boost cons tech capacity at an international NGO! Fauna & Flora International is offering a paid three-month internship to consolidate and share best practices for the application of emerging hardware and software...
26 August 2022
The Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Environmental Studies (WFE), SLU, Umeå, is looking for a postdoc with strong interests in wildlife conservation technology.
26 August 2022
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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@dmorris joined Variety Hour to give us 'a bunch of lightning talks inside a lightning talk'. Check out the recording to get a whirlwind... |
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AI for Conservation, Drones, Remote Sensing & GIS | 5 months 3 weeks ago | |
Also, take a look at TrapTagger. It has integration with WildMe. |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps | 5 months 3 weeks ago | |
Hello Sam,What would you say would be the estimate cost was for the first version Instant Detect 1.0 ? That might help my research ? |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Sensors | 6 months 2 weeks ago | |
We are writing a methodology to measure Biodiversity density in habitats.Examining lots of different options but very keen to hear from... |
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AI for Conservation | 6 months 3 weeks ago | |
Hi @GermanFore ,I work with the BearID Project on individual identification of brown bears from faces. More recently we worked on face detection across all bear species and ran... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Data management and processing tools, Software and Mobile Apps | 7 months ago | |
Hey Wildlabbers! Is anyone planning to go to the Academic Data Science Alliance (ADSA) annual meeting next week in San Antonio? I'll be... |
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AI for Conservation, Community Base | 7 months 2 weeks ago | |
This is super cool! Me and @Hubertszcz and @briannajohns and several others are all working towards some big biodiversity monitoring projects for a large conservation project here... |
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AI for Conservation, Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Camera Traps | 8 months 2 weeks ago | |
Hello! If you were interested in the DSAIL Tech4Wildlife Workshop last week exploring how AI can be used to aid conservation efforts, you... |
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AI for Conservation, Conservation Tech Training and Education | 8 months 2 weeks ago | |
Very helpful, thank you. One more thing, are there any broad skills that apply to all areas of conservation tech that may be helpful to learn/improve, e.g data analysis? |
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AI for Conservation, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Early Career | 9 months ago | |
Hi everyone! We were so delighted to have Adrien along to our June Variety Hour to share more about the Nocturnal Bird Migration project. If you missed it, you can catch up with... |
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AI for Conservation | 10 months 3 weeks ago | |
During Andrew's talk in our June Variety hour (see here), @dmorris put out a call in the chat that might be relevant to our marine and ai... |
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AI for Conservation, Marine Conservation | 10 months 3 weeks ago | |
During Andrew's talk, @dmorris put out a call in the chat that might be relevant to folks catching up on the video, so I'll drop it here too: Re: Andrew's fish work... part... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Drones, Marine Conservation | 10 months 3 weeks ago |
VIHAR-2024 deadline extension, June 30th (Interspeech satellite event)
5 June 2024 10:30am
7 June 2024 8:29am
hi Alex!! I already posted the event, I just wanted to posted an update: the deadline was extended.
AI Identification Models on Thermal Data
6 June 2024 8:30pm
7 June 2024 1:17am
I can't help you with a model, but FWIW I know of one thermal camera trap dataset you may find useful for bootstrapping your training:
https://lila.science/datasets/new-zealand-wildlife-thermal-imaging/
If you find the dataset useful, let the data contributors now!
7 June 2024 4:06am
Wow! This dataset seems great and definitely worth trying out. Do you perhaps have a dataset for deer, elk, and those animals of the sort?
I live in the mountainous region so deer are very common and easily hit.
Thank you again
€4,000 travel grants for insect monitoring an AI
6 June 2024 4:49pm
Has anyone combined flying drone surveys with AI for counting wild herds?
14 April 2024 3:40pm
27 May 2024 10:55am
Actually my Raspberry Pi application is a sound localizer not related to image recognition. My image recognition related project runs on Jetsons and higher.
But I think recognizing bugs on a drone would likely be challenging. You would have to have sufficient detail to get good recognition which would be a very narrow field of view and then vibration also becomes an issue.
For example, the trainings on just the coco dataset seems to distill the recognition of people to a multi-segmented thing with bits sticking out. So spiders on camera lens are highly likely to be seen as people. To get better results much more training data is needed. I expect it's also likely to be the case for insects, really large amounts of training data would be needed to tell the difference between different types.
31 May 2024 5:47pm
Hi Johnathan,
There is a Canadian company more or less doing that. They have their own endurance drone and optical/thermal cameras. Very much keyed into surveys and they may have success given the number of helicopter accidents we have had in Western Canada. Not sure if the AI part is there yet.
I know they've done surveys with at least one department here but not much beyond that. I talked to one of the developers their just as a point of interest. The current leadership today looks different than I remember though.
6 June 2024 2:48pm
The camera can be aimed at the greenhouse background, which is like a huge green screen. Inside the greenhouse there's only a few flying insects, and they would all have to fly between the optics and the wall or roof eventually. Or if the bot is flying, have it look upwards.
It's pretty much a programing question. Unfortunately I am not the type of person who is good at both building and troubleshooting hardware, and writing code. I took some programming back in college but I am not sure if I want to get myself up to speed. It's starting to sound like I need a few years of college before I can even get started. Which I already did, too bad none of it counts for anything anymore. Or I guess I can compete in the marketplace with people with real money behind them, which is the only thing that means anything. If you are brilliant and not funded, you might as well be a scarecrow.
New WildLabs Funding & Finance group
5 June 2024 3:24pm
5 June 2024 4:14pm
6 June 2024 1:38am
6 June 2024 4:16am
Mass Detection of Wildlife Snares Using Airborne Synthetic Radar
7 January 2024 6:50am
28 May 2024 5:06am
Hi @DaveGaynor regarding funding, have you reached out to any lodges? I know that snaring is rife in the Manyaleti ... maybe some of the lodges in the Sabi Sands would be interested in helping you with your goal?
31 May 2024 12:57pm
Aakash, that is a really amazing offer, we really need people capable of analyzing the radar data and used to working with signal processing I will reach out to you now.
4 June 2024 7:52pm
Hi David - have you seen this opportunity? It may be a good one to apply to for support (the Darwin Initiative).
Apply! 2024 Conservation Tech Award
3 June 2024 3:51pm
Recruiting for a paid study on Explainable AI & bird identification
1 June 2024 8:34pm
Announcing: BeetlePalooza 2024
31 May 2024 9:00pm
🌟 Seeking a Mentor in Software Engineering 🌟
30 May 2024 10:46am
Bioacoustics and AI 101
29 May 2024 2:21pm
9th Workshop On Detection and Classification of Acoustic Scenes and Events
28 May 2024 8:57pm
32nd European Signal Processing Conference
28 May 2024 8:44pm
5th World Ecoacoustics Congress
28 May 2024 8:07pm
Indigenous communities and AI for Conservation
8 May 2024 12:32pm
8 May 2024 7:04pm
Oh yeah that would be awesome! Let me email you to follow up. I assume you're working with Alec Christie then? He was sharing your team's work in our chatgpt discussion:
![](/sites/default/files/embeds/2fb3aa0170a24362f50141f6ab2b50c9.jpg)
ChatGPT for conservation | WILDLABS
Hi, I've been wondering what this community's thoughts are on ChatGPT? I was just having a play with it and asked:"could you write me a script in python that loads photos and tells me if there's cat in the photo?"followed by..."what if I haven't got a pre-trained model?"and finally..."are there any websites I could just upload all my images to that would do this for me?"It's just such a useful tool, I wondered if anyone else has thoughts on how it could be useful for conservation?
9 May 2024 10:26am
Yes, exactly! Alec and I are working together on this.
24 May 2024 3:53pm
I am also commenting for future notifications - very interested to hear some responses.
While not directly related to AI, here in Canada there's quite a conversation around data sovereignty for Indigenous communities, such as OCAP (Ownership, Control, Access, Possession) which may be able to connect you with some of the big players in this part of the world. There is also a few efforts to incorporate more Indigenous knowledge systems in statistical modelling which may be of interest: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.09.07.556613v1.full.pdf
Home - The First Nations Information Governance Centre
We envision that every First Nation will achieve data sovereignty in alignment with its distinct world view.
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Computational Entomology Webinar III: Processing liquid samples
22 May 2024 12:40am
DeepDive: estimating global biodiversity patterns through time using deep learning
20 May 2024 4:51pm
These authors "develop an approach based on stochastic simulations of biodiversity and a deep learning model to infer richness at global or regional scales through time while incorporating spatial, temporal and taxonomic sampling variation."
Successfully integrated deepfaune into video alerting system
2 December 2023 11:15am
3 May 2024 3:07pm
Yeah. I’ve seen the video. Very nice. Good luck with that ! Let us know how it goes.
4 May 2024 12:44pm
Hi Thijs, the use of that inflatable device to scare off bears suggests that the location you are using it has significant power available.
Is this a common situation for the places in Romania that have bear trouble ? Because I think your other systems were running off batteries is that correct ?
12 May 2024 2:59pm
Yes, this system is designed to be installed near farms. We also have the repeller system with audio & light, that is battery & solar powered. This system is a "last line of defence". The blowers alone requires 1000 watts :)
4th International Workshop onCamera Traps, AI, and Ecology
9 May 2024 1:00pm
Harnessing large language models for coding, teaching and inclusion to empower research in ecology and evolution
9 May 2024 12:51pm
Check out this paper that reviews the current state of AI in conservation.
Voices of Sustainability: Perspectives from - Africa Wholesome Sustainability Explained: What is E-PIE
7 May 2024 3:06am
ChatGPT for conservation
16 January 2023 10:04am
2 May 2024 9:39pm
In my experience, ChatGPT-4 performs significantly better than version 3.5, especially in terms of contextual understanding. However, like any AI model, inaccuracies cannot be completely eliminated. I've also seen a video showing that Gemini appears to excel at literature reviews, though I haven't personally tested it yet. Here's the link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPiOP_CB54A.
4 May 2024 6:44am
While GPT3.5 is good for some activities, GPT-4 and GPT4-turbo are much better. Anthropic Claude is also very good, on a par with GPT4 for many tasks. As someone else has mentioned, the key is in the prompt you use, though chatGPT is continually being extended to allow more contextual information to be included, for example external files that have been uploaded previously. Code execution and image generation are also possible with the paid version of chatGPT, and the latest models include data up to the end of 2023 (I think). You can also include calls to openAI or other APIs programatically to include these in your workflows for assisting with a variety of tasks.
Regarding end results - as always, we're responsible for whatever outputs are ultimately published/shared etc.
For Conservation Evidence - you could try making your own GPT (chatGPT assistant) that can be published/shared using your own evidence base and prompt that should be well grounded and provide good responses (I should think). But don't use 3.5 for that, IMO.
4 May 2024 8:28pm
Undoubted things will quickly evolve from just "straight" ChatGPTn, BARD, ClaudeAI, etc "standard" models, to more specialized Retrieval Augmentation Generation (RAG) , where facts from authoritative sources and rules are supplied as context for the LLM to summarize in its response. You can direct ChatGPT and BARD: "Your response must be based on the reference sections provided" up to a few K of tokens. A huge amount of work is going into properly indexing reference materials in order to supply context to the reference models. Folks like FAO and CGIAR are indexing all their agricultural knowledge to feed the standard ones with location, crop, livestock, etc specialty "knowledge" to provide farmers automated advice via mobile phones, etc. I can totally see the same for such mundane things as "how do I ... using ArcMAP or QGIS?" purely based on the vast amount of documentation and tutorials. Google, ChatGPT, etc do a really good job already; this is just totally focusing its response to the body of knowledge known in advance to be relevant.
I would highly recommend folks do some searching on "LLM RAG" - that's what going nuts now across the board.
Then there's stuff I like to call "un-SQL" ... unstructured query language .. that will take free-form queries to form SQL queries, with supporting visualization code.
see:
"https://mlnotes.substack.com/p/no-more-text2sql-its-now-rag2sql"
"http://censusgpt.com"
etc.
As far as writing and evaluating proposals, I saw a paper on how summarization of public review forms are being developed in several cities.
see: "http://streetleveladvisors.com/?p=181562"
And that's just the standard LLMs; super-specialized LLMs based on Facebook Llama are being built purely based on domain-specific bodies of dialog - medical, etc. LOTS of Phds to be done.
I think what will be critical in all this are strong audit trails and certification mechanisms to gain trust. Especially when it comes to deceptive simple terms like "best"
Chris
AI & Gamified Citizen Science
3 May 2024 7:24am
3 May 2024 5:09pm
Check out FathomVerse, a new game by MBARI folks for involving citizen scientists in improving algorithms to ID deep sea critters!
![](/sites/default/files/embeds/bcd811a532ddd1ad203d845f9f367843.png)
FathomVerse | mobile game
FathomVerse is a mobile game designed to inspire a new wave of ocean explorers and improve AI for ocean life.
![](/sites/default/files/embeds/706bf68a7d8f9d65b22efefe92e74190.png)
3 May 2024 8:28pm
This is so cool! I am 1000% going to see if they want to come talk about it at Variety Hou!
Travel grants for insect monitoring an AI
3 May 2024 5:20pm
Drop-deployed HydroMoth
2 April 2024 10:20am
15 April 2024 6:53am
Hi Matthew,
Thanks for your advice, this is really helpful!
I'm planning to use it in a seagrass meadow survey for a series of ~20 drops/sites to around 30 m, recording for around 10 minutes each time, in Cornwall, UK.
At this stage I reckon we won't exceed 30 m, but based on your advice, I think this sounds like not the best setup for the surveys we want to try.
We will try the Aquarian H1a, attached to the Zoom H1e unit, through a PVC case. This is what Aquarian recommended to me when I contacted them too.
Thanks for the advice, to be honest the software component is what I was most interested in when it came to the AudioMoth- is there any other open source software you would recommend for this?
Best wishes,
Sol
21 April 2024 7:10pm
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/hydromoth, so you would have to make a PCB centered around this chip. You could mimic the functionality of the audiomoth software on another chip, like on a raspberry pi with python's pyaudio library for example. The problem you would have is that the H1A requires phantom power, so it's not plug and play. I'm not too aware with the H1e, but maybe you can control the microphone through the recorder that is programmable through activations by the RPi (not that this is the most efficient MCU for this application, but it is user friendly). A simpler solution might be to just record continuously and play a sound or take notes of when your 10 min deployment starts. I think it should last you >6 hours with a set of lithium energizer batteries. You may want to think about putting a penetrator on the PVC housing for a push button or switch to start when you deploy. They make a few waterproof options.
Just somethign else that occured to me, but if you're dropping these systems, you'll want to ensure that the system isn't wobbling in the seagrass as that will probably be all you will hear on the recordings, especially if you plan to deploy shallower. For my studies in Curacao, we aim to be 5lbs negative, but this all depends on your current and surface action. You might also want to think about the time of day you're recording biodiversity in general. I may suggest recording the site for a bit (a couple days or a week) prior to your study to see what you should account for (e.g. tide flow/current/anthropogenic disturbance) and determine diel patterning of vocalizations you are aiming to collect if subsampling at 10 minutes.
Cheers,
Matt
3 May 2024 12:55pm
Hi Sol,
If the maximum depth is 30m, it would be worth experimenting with HydroMoth in this application especially if the deployment time is short. As Matt says, the air-filed case means it is not possible to accurately calibrate the signal strength due to the directionality of the response. For some applications, this doesn't matter. For others, it may.
Another option for longer/deeper deployments would be an Aquarian H2D hydrophone which will plug directly into AudioMoth Dev or AudioMoth 1.2 (with the 3.5mm jack added). You can then use any appropriately sized battery pack.
If you also connect a magnetic switch, as per the GPS board, you can stop and start recording from outside the housing with the standard firmware.
Alex
AI-enabled image query system
2 May 2024 2:16am
Elephant Collective Behaviour Project - Principal Investigator
1 May 2024 1:59pm
The Inventory User Guide
1 May 2024 12:46pm
Introducing The Inventory!
1 May 2024 12:46pm
2 May 2024 3:08pm
3 May 2024 5:33pm
17 May 2024 7:29am
Hiring Chief Engineer at Conservation X Labs
1 May 2024 12:19pm
5 June 2024 3:05pm
Thanks for sharing this @nkundiushuti ! I think this post would be better suited as an event, that way it will show up on the WILDLABS event calendar page. Let me know if you have any questions on how to make an event post! You just click the +Post button in the top right corner, then click "event."