Ready to put your Tech Tutors skills into practice? WILDLABS and Freaklabs are proud to announce our new virtual course: Build Your Own Data Logger. This eight-part video tutorial series will guide wildlife and conservation researchers through building and deploying custom hardware using the Arduino platform. To join, Register now!
This course is free to all, but if you would like to build along with the course in real-time, you can purchase the WildLogger board and kit for $30 (USD) here
About the Series
If our first season of Tech Tutors inspired you to put your conservation tech skills to the test, we've got a brand-new experience coming to WILDLABS! Where can you start learning how to use Arduino to build custom devices for wildlife and conservation research? Right here!
Beginning this November, WILDLABS and Freaklabs are proud to introduce an eight-part video tutorial series that guides wildlife and conservation researchers through building and deploying custom hardware using the Arduino platform. The series will use WildLogger - an Arduino-based board that’s designed for deployment - to create a custom data logger.
Are you new to Arduino, or maybe not entirely sure what Arduino is? Good news - this series is for beginners like you! By the end of our eight modules, you'll have the practical skills and knowledge base you need to deploy your creation for real.
The series assumes no hardware experience. It’ll cover common terminology, components, the hardware design stack, setting up the Arduino environment, programming and optimising your application, choosing and modifying enclosures, piloting, testing, deploying and troubleshooting.
You’re not on your own. Our interactive series makes it easier than ever to get feedback and guidance as you learn. Every two weeks, we’ll host a live Office Hours event to troubleshoot, answer questions in person, and release the next module in the series. We'll also have cheat sheets and code to download, plus a forum to ask questions between sessions. And of course, you can build along with the course in real-time with the WildLogger board and kit, available here.
The tutorial is free and allows you to move at your own pace with videos available to all on the WILDLABS Youtube channel. To navigate through all course content, visit the Course Directory.
To join this virtual course, register here!
Worked as a mechanical engineer for a defence co, then software engineer, then for a research lab specialising in underwater robotics.
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- 137 Discussions
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My main interest is in the application of geospatial technology for ecology and conservation
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- 12 Discussions
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- @capreolus
- | he/him
Capreolus e.U.
wildlife biologist with capreolus.at
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- 69 Discussions
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- @jcaris
- | hi/him
Smith College & Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University
Senior Drone Data Scientist, Tufts University; Former Director of the Spatial Analysis Lab at Smith College. Teaching, learning, and collaborating with brilliant students & faculty
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- @crazybirdguy
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Field Biologist at Yayasan Cikananga Konservasi Terpadu, Indonesia, with experience and interest mainly in ornithology, citizen science and bioaccoustic
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Woods Hole Group
Argos satellite system manager for North America
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- @TaliaSpeaker
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WILDLABS & World Wide Fund for Nature/ World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
I'm the WILDLABS Research Specialist at WWF-US
- 12 Resources
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- 24 Groups
- @StephODonnell
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WILDLABS & Fauna & Flora
I'm the Executive Manager at WILDLABS.
- 152 Resources
- 665 Discussions
- 30 Groups
Noé
Hi! I am Aurélie, a dedicated French ornithologist and engineer specialized in conservation technologies. I am currently Program manager for the biodiversity of natural habitats' program in a French NGO called Noé.
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WILDLABS & Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)
I hold a PhD in Biological Sciences and specialize in bioacoustics and passive acoustic monitoring of cetaceans in the Argentine Sea and Antarctica. Recently, I've also embraced computing to leverage technology in enhancing our conservation efforts.
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Apasionado por la vida en el campo y la electronica aplicada a proyectos de conservacion
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Sustainability Manager for CERES Tag LTD. An animal health company; animal monitoring, conservation, & anti-poaching/ rural crime. Wildlife, livestock, equine & companion. #CeresTrace #CeresWild #CeresRanch
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Article
Read in detail about how to use The Inventory, our new living directory of conservation technology tools, organisations, and R&D projects.
1 May 2024
Article
The Inventory is your one-stop shop for conservation technology tools, organisations, and R&D projects. Start contributing to it now!
1 May 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
Can you create an ecological data collection application on Android for Gibbon and Biodiversity Research. Check out this opportunity with us!
24 August 2023
We are recruiting a graduate student to work on a 3D groundwater flow sensor in collaboration with USGS. Experience with C/C++ or similar programming languages is preferred, but not required.
12 July 2023
Spaceborne Satellite-tag RF Systems to Measure Spatiotemporal Patterns of Wildlife
12 July 2023
Careers
Permanent and Full Time role at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
8 June 2023
As the FieldKit hardware ecosystem grows, Conservify is seeking a Junior Electrical Engineer to assist with testing, troubleshooting, prototype development, and developing production test fixtures for our growing...
9 December 2022
Article
Welcome to the eighth and final module of our Build Your Own Data Logger virtual course. We’ve built, coded and tested our data logger. Now we’re taking it into the field.
22 October 2021
Article
Welcome to the sixth module of our Build Your Own Data Logger virtual course. In these videos, we’ll discuss ways to protect devices from water, dust and animals. Then we assemble the WildLogger using cable glands so...
6 September 2021
Article
Welcome to the seventh module of our Build Your Own Data Logger virtual course. In this module, we take our fully assembled system into the lab, sandbox and pilot test environments.
6 September 2021
Welcome to the fifth module of our Build Your Own Data Logger virtual course. In these videos, we’ll optimise our data logger application, and add the finishing touches to application code so it’s ready for deployment.
25 May 2021
March 2024
event
November 2023
event
Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hi Jamie,Nitrate sensors for sewage are quite pricey, so I might go with a bunch of OpenCTD loggers, on the theory that the conductivity will spike in sewage. There may also... |
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Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Citizen Science | 5 minutes 10 seconds 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 | 1 month 1 week ago | |
You mention you're working with an engineer, here are a couple of pointers:with an SDR (the "digital USB receivers" you mention) you can scan some bandwidth to detect radio pulses... |
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Biologging, Build Your Own Data Logger Community | 1 month 1 week ago | |
First things first, our team, @jcguerra10, @hefca, and myself, is thrilled to share with immense pride... |
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Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Data management and processing tools, Sensors | 1 month 2 weeks ago | |
Thank you all for this advice! I'll be looking into all of these options. I really appreciate you all taking the time to think about this.I ran out of time to pull this together... |
+11
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Build Your Own Data Logger Community | 1 month 3 weeks ago | |
Am working on similar AI challenge at the moment. Hoping to translate my workflow to wolves in future if needed. We all are little overstretched but it there is no pressing... |
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Camera Traps, AI for Conservation, Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Data management and processing tools, Marine Conservation, Protected Area Management Tools, Remote Sensing & GIS | 3 months 3 weeks ago | |
I dont have anything written up but I can tell what parts we used and how we tested.Its pretty straightforward, we used this M10 Enclosure Vent from Blue Robotics: Along with... |
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Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Acoustics, Camera Traps, Climate Change, East Africa Community, Marine Conservation, Open Source Solutions, Protected Area Management Tools | 3 months 4 weeks ago | |
Makes sense if you have the cash... |
+8
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Biologging, Climate Change, Sensors, Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Emerging Tech | 7 months 3 weeks ago | |
ooh very cool Salman! Amazing how much tracking devices have come down in price over the years and LoRa/LoRawan is just such a perfect fit for GPS data. Thanks heaps for sharing.... |
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Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Open Source Solutions | 8 months 1 week ago | |
Yes, but for our needs that are not powerful enough |
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Acoustics, Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Camera Traps, Emerging Tech, Open Source Solutions | 1 year 1 month ago | |
Hey Tom,Since the output is dependent on a couple of factors such as the solar irradiance of the place, shading from the canopy, the type of solar panels (mono, poly or amorphous... |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, Build Your Own Data Logger Community, Camera Traps, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Sensors | 1 year 3 months ago | |
You can try Frank G.. He's a fantastically innovative engineer who founded and rubs the Maker's Space at Barstow College in Barstow, Calif. Frank is very familiar with... |
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Build Your Own Data Logger Community | 1 year 5 months ago |
Data loggers for sewage monitoring
7 May 2024 3:51pm
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
WILDLABS AWARDS 2024 - FinDrop: Accessible Acoustic Monitoring for Mesophotic Marine Environments
5 April 2024 10:22pm
7 April 2024 6:07pm
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 community. Look forward to learning more about your project!
Liz
DIY VHF receivers?
12 March 2024 2:51pm
29 March 2024 4:32pm
Hi Brandon,
I agree and think VHF will always have better range than UHF. Given how commonly it's used in wildlife tracking, it also makes perfect sense to use it if possible. The trade-off for us was to go for lower cost and higher availability parts. This is particularly a problem for VHF receivers, as you mentioned in your original message. But, SDR is good option potentially for VHF (and UHF), especially given the success of MOTUS.
Range of our 433MHz UHF tags was usually around 250m (up to 500m) LOS, using an external antenna and a high transmission power. We also used high gain, omnidriectional antennas on the receiver end. Tags were triggered by an accelerometer threshold so that they'd save a bit of power whilst animals were resting.
More than happy to discuss further and help if I can.
Cheers,
Rob
3 April 2024 5:04am
Hi Brandon,
This is hard for me to write, because I don't have good news for you. You can find many receivers and transmitters for 433MHz that are used for remote control, such as wireless doorbells, garage door openers, lost model locators, etc. These are extremely cheap, a couple of dollars literally. While this tech can be modified to operate with wildlife tags (around 150MHz), we are talking about hacking RF, not to be approached lightly.
If you really need to DIY, I see 2 options: migrate to 433MHz and build/rebuild all your kit (tags, collars, receivers, locators). Commercial solutions are cheap and available, the work remaining is not much above handyman level. But it is work, and not just work but also testing.
The other option is to remain with 150MHz (although you can make your own tags) and modify an aviation receiver (it lets you listen in to aircraft talking to each other or to the airport). These receivers operate at 130MHz, which puts it in spitting range of 150MHz wildlife tags (this matters). This is the option I'd go for, just because I know it can be done, and I have less sense than curiosity.
4 April 2024 9:05pm
You mention you're working with an engineer, here are a couple of pointers:
- with an SDR (the "digital USB receivers" you mention) you can scan some bandwidth to detect radio pulses. I'm only familiar with the Lotek coded VHF transmitters but they can be received as in the Motus Sensorgnomes. I can point you at the code used there, it does involve a good amount of digital signal filtering/analysis code. One issue with the SDRs is that they're pretty power hungry so you need to plan on more solar panel and battery than you may like, e.g. even rPi Zero + SDR is probably >300mA. Another issue can be interference in that SDRs have a very wideband front-end and so TV, radio, and other stuff can desensitize the front-end.
- there are integrated receivers (ICs) that can be tuned to 150Mhz and can detect VHF transmissions, it's easy for non-coded ones, a bit more involved for coded ones. Specifically, the Semtech sx1231 or sx1276 series are widely available (often called Hope RF69 or RF96, which are modules with those chips). You need someone comfortable writing a customized driver that uses OOK mode or RSSI detection. The other issue is that while there are many suitable boards available for 433/868/915Mhz (e.g. Adafruit, Sparkfun, LilyGo, and many others) you most likely won't find one for 150Mhz. However, for RX-only the matching isn't so super important if you have a good antenna and the signal isn't crazy weak. From a power point of view these can sip power so you can run one on an 18650 for days and a small 1W-5W solar panel is most likely all you need.
Hope this helps...
WILDLABS AWARDS 2024 - BoutScout: Monitoring System for Avian Nesting Behavior Studies
31 March 2024 5:57am
Finding a Data Logger
9 February 2024 4:22pm
22 March 2024 1:41am
If it's a standard Arduino Uno, you can use the Software Serial library to emulate the serial ports you need. Otherwise you can use the ATMega1284P and the MightyCore core files which opens things up to two hardware serial ports (UARTs) as well as software serial. Or you can use the ATMega4809 with MegaCoreX which will give you up to 4 hardware serial ports (1 for debug and up to 3 for peripherals). These are all usable within the Arduino environment.
Good luck with your project!
Akiba
22 March 2024 7:32am
Great summary, thanks Akiba.
22 March 2024 12:20pm
Thank you all for this advice! I'll be looking into all of these options. I really appreciate you all taking the time to think about this.
I ran out of time to pull this together for my current research trip, but I hope to be able to implement it for my summer field season.
Post-doc possition - Field spanning movement ecology, ecology of fear, bio-logging science, behavioral ecology, and ecological statistics
10 February 2024 7:20am
Bio-Logging Science Symposium
9 February 2024 3:59pm
Jupyter Notebook: Aquatic Computer Vision
25 January 2024 5:50am
26 January 2024 1:46pm
This is quite interesting. Would love to see if we could improve this code using custom models and alternative ways of processing the video stream.
27 January 2024 4:07am
This definitely seems like the community to do it. I was looking at the thread about wolf detection and it seems like people here are no strangers to image classification. A little overwhelming to be quite honest 😂
While it would be incredible to have a powerful model that was capable of auto-classifying everything right away and storing all the detected creatures & correlated sensor data straight into a database - I wonder if in remote cases where power (and therefore cpu bandwidth), data storage, and network connectivity is at a premium if it would be more valuable to just be able to highlight moments of interest for lab analysis later? OR if you do you have cellular connection, you could download just those moments of interest and not hours and hours of footage?
27 January 2024 6:11am
Am working on similar AI challenge at the moment. Hoping to translate my workflow to wolves in future if needed.
We all are little overstretched but it there is no pressing deadlines, it should be possible to explore building efficient model for object detection and looking at suitable hardware for running these model on the edge.
Recycled & DIY Remote Monitoring Buoy
15 January 2024 1:14am
15 January 2024 9:17pm
Hello fellow Brett. Cool project. You mentioned a waterseal testing process. Is there documentation on that?
18 January 2024 10:25am
I dont have anything written up but I can tell what parts we used and how we tested.
Its pretty straightforward, we used this M10 Enclosure Vent from Blue Robotics:
Along with this nipple adapter:
Then you can use any cheap hand held break pump to connect to your enclosure. You can pump a small vacuum in and make sure the pressure holds.
Here's a tutorial video from blue robotics:
Let me know if you have any questions or if I can help out.
Insight; a secure online platform designed for sharing experiences of conservation tool use.
7 November 2023 1:01pm
A secure platform designed for those working to monitor & protect natural resources. Insight facilitates sharing experience, knowledge & tools to increase efficiency & effectiveness in conservation. By sharing we reduce time & money spent to find, test, & implement solutions.
Best Temperature/ Humidity Dataloggers
24 April 2023 1:30pm
11 September 2023 2:49pm
Heya Nick - ooh cool! We thought about the Kestrels but I had heard about some of the problems with them maxing out at 100. Have gone for HOBO Pro V2s
11 September 2023 2:51pm
Heya Matthew cheers for providing a comparison! We went with HOBO Pro V2s which are more expensive but have been working well so far!
23 September 2023 6:14am
Makes sense if you have the cash...
Experience with SeeedStudio T1000 as tracker and data logger.
4 September 2023 1:42pm
8 September 2023 4:37pm
ooh very cool Salman! Amazing how much tracking devices have come down in price over the years and LoRa/LoRawan is just such a perfect fit for GPS data. Thanks heaps for sharing.
All the best,
Rob
Mobile App. Developer / Gibbon Research
24 August 2023 9:59am
Funded Position Building Groundwater Flow Sensor
12 July 2023 8:39pm
Postdoc for electrical engineering at NASA
12 July 2023 12:08pm
The Wildlife Society Conference
19 June 2023 5:59am
Wildlife Monitoring Engineer
8 June 2023 4:54pm
Global shortage of Raspberry Pis - What are the alternatives
3 November 2022 10:27am
28 March 2023 9:37pm
Have you considered Arduinos?
29 March 2023 10:13am
UPDATE: The Banana Pi didnt work out for us as it was not possible to track back all the components and ensure that they were responsibly sourced. The Rock board did work for us and we were able to port our system onto this. We will be rolling out units using this over the summer. It also looks like Raspberry Pis are coming back on line and we were able to secure a bulk order for deliver mid-summer
29 March 2023 10:14am
Yes, but for our needs that are not powerful enough
Solar panels in the tropics
26 January 2023 12:28am
27 January 2023 1:23pm
Hi Tom,
I'm with Akiba, you have to test. A collaborator has deployed solar-augmented kit in secondary jungle and some of them got enough light, and others didn't, so it can work. The open circuit voltage of solar panels doesn't change a whole lot in dim light, but the current drops drastically. So you would choose an oversize panel of the same voltage (or a bit higher).
Thanks
27 January 2023 3:56pm
I've been intrigued by this topic. Thinking about ways you could use drones or some kind of launcher to deploy panels above the canopy. Sadly I live in the great white north so I have no way of testing any concepts. Maybe even some kind of solar balloon that could float above the canopy. Interesting design problem.
30 January 2023 10:10am
Hey Tom,
Since the output is dependent on a couple of factors such as the solar irradiance of the place, shading from the canopy, the type of solar panels (mono, poly or amorphous) and orientation of the panels, etc, I'd suggest you use a software to simulate the different parameters to get an almost accurate estimation of the output. You can try PVsyst- it has a free month trial (I haven't used it before but I hear it's great) or any other PV software :)
Junior Electrical Engineer (Hardware)
9 December 2022 5:04pm
Looking for Electronic Design Consultancy in California
26 November 2022 3:35pm
28 November 2022 9:52am
Hi, Synapse is a good option if you're looking for professionalism & speed, they're in San Francisco (and Seattle). It's a sister company to the one I work for in the UK so I could put you in touch with the right people if you're interested.
2 December 2022 7:31pm
You can try Frank G.. He's a fantastically innovative engineer who founded and rubs the Maker's Space at Barstow College in Barstow, Calif. Frank is very familiar with complexities, needs, and budgets of field-based conservation. His email address is: [email protected].
Build Your Own Data Logger
24 October 2022 2:40pm
24 October 2022 3:06pm
HI Wayne.
Sure. The main thing is selecting and interfacing the sensors that you'd need. If you had a water meter that fed out the data, then you could just timestamp it and log it to the microSD card. Otherwise, for the data you're looking for, it's likely you'd need a water flow sensor and water pressure sensor. Flow would let you know the rate of water flow in a pipe, ie: usage. Pressure would allow you to detect if a leak occurs (slight decrease in average water pressure over time) or burst (sudden large decrease in water pressure).
At the moment, we're not actively selling the WildLogger since the chip shortage made inventory more precious. But if you email, we can arrange one if you were curious to try the course.
Akiba
Water leakage in aquatic tags at deeper depths
12 October 2022 12:37pm
20 October 2022 11:41am
Thanks a lot Alasdair, this is great. We will take this into consideration for our next testing phase.
Best
Hari
21 October 2022 4:12pm
I'll add - avoid fast curing resins/epoxies for, at least, two reasons:
1. The exothermic reaction between the two compounds can cause sensor issues (ie: heat).
2. Air bubbles will form (and cure) more easily in fast curing compounds.
23 October 2022 2:51pm
Thanks Thomas!! We do use slow curing resins with no heat generation
Rainforest SigFox available for use
26 August 2022 6:09pm
26 September 2022 10:20pm
Hi Roland,
This is really amazing, great to hear about your set-up! I'm just wondering what the overall cost was to set up this system? Just thinking in terms of setting up something similar in other parks and what they should expect with regard to price. Would also be great to hear about the overall effort, e.g., hours/team members required. It would be great to have this act as a blueprint for other organizations/research stations wishing to deploy a similar system within their respective national parks/areas/etc.!
10 October 2022 8:33am
Hi Rolland,
Interested too, but why did you choose SigFox (a private network) rather than LoRa (open network)?
Sigfox currently has some financial troubles that, don't know what it will become in the long term.
18 October 2022 11:55am
Hi Everyone,
We chose sigfox becuase it seems to have better range and is plug-play, whereas LoRa requires more custom programming and updating. Getting a gateway cost us $2000 for a year's lease + deposit. We covered solar power. There are also some 'minigateways' you can purchase but I don't know how they compare in range (plan to test). So far we are happy with the performance, in that it has worked consistency with no outages (once we stabilized the power supply). I think the annual costs are about $10 per tag. We are working on a paper that will describe this in more detail. So far just using for tracking tags but also looking at a trap sensor.
cheers
Roland
Open-source Argos satellite tag for bears - available now
7 October 2022 4:49pm
9 October 2022 5:14am
Oh, that looks so good, and some heavy hitting design firms too!
Frontiers Symposium: Digital tools for reversing environmental degradation
5 October 2022 10:23am
Avian nest box monitoring
14 September 2022 2:30pm
14 September 2022 3:08pm
Maybe this is a starting point. Any idea if this product would work inside the box. Kestrel DROP D3 Wireless Temperature, Humidity & Pressure Data Logger https://amzn.eu/d/5VdQwtA
23 September 2022 12:34pm
I'd be interested in any camera monitoring setups that can be used inside a nest box. Most camera traps are too bulky for this purpose. All the devices I've looked at either need a wired connection or a wifi network to transmit images. I want one that can store all info to an SD card and preferably be solar powered. Obviously infrared or starlight sensitivity. Sound recording would be a bonus for some bird monitoring I want to do.
23 September 2022 1:16pm
Done lots of this over the years and it depends on the species really. If you want incubation behaviour and hence success or otherwise using temperature then the Thermocron IButton DS1921G is perfect. The new Blue Maestro is an option I became aware of this year but I haven't tested at scale.
In terms of cameras and endoscopes I've tailored many off the shelf products and built a few from scratch. When I get chance I'll have a look around and see what is still available.
How To Use An Arduino – Beginners Guide
1 September 2022 10:02pm
For anyone interested in WILDLABS' Build Your Own Data Logger course, this beginner's guide to Arduino may be a valuable resource! This page also includes links to other relevant resources on Arduino language and getting started with Arduino software for the first time.
18 May 2024 2:55am
Hi Jamie,
Nitrate sensors for sewage are quite pricey, so I might go with a bunch of OpenCTD loggers, on the theory that the conductivity will spike in sewage. There may also be a detectable temperature signal.