Despite critical advancements in the tech solutions available to conservationists around the world, many existing tools are cost-prohibitive in the landscapes that need them most. Additionally, those who create low-cost and open-source alternatives to pricey market tech are often operating on tight budgets themselves, meaning they have limited resources for the promotion of their solutions to a wider market. We need increased communication around these solutions to highlight their availability, share lessons learned in their creation, and avoid duplication of efforts.
This group is a place to share low-cost, open-source devices for conservation; describe how they are being used, including what needs they are addressing and how they fit in to the wider conservation tech market; identify the obstacles in advancing the capacity of these technologies; and to discuss the future of these solutions - particularly their sustainability and how best to collaborate moving forward.
Header image: Shawn F. McCracken
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Science Outreach Lead-Rainforest Connection (RFCx) & ArbimonEcoacoustics, biodiversity monitoring, primates, lemurs
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Ph.D Speech-Hearing Sciences; 3D Designer/Printer interested in building/testing/deploying standardized environmental recording platforms for scientists and engineers in developing countries.
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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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Wildlife technician and camera traps enthusiast
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- @StephODonnell
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WILDLABS & Fauna & Flora
I'm the Executive Manager at WILDLABS.
- 152 Resources
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- @ptynecki
- | Piotr
Software Engineer with 10+ years of experience in application design, development, testing and deployment. Highly experienced in Health Care, Life Science and BigData projects. Artificial Intelligence researcher (NLP, Computer Vision) with experience in Wildlife Conservation.
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I am biologist, I have studied wild life and ethnobiology at Amazon and caimans in Brazil
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Can you create an ecological data collection application on Android for Gibbon and Biodiversity Research. Check out this opportunity with us!
24 August 2023
Article
At Appsilon, we are always working to enable our users to get the most out of our solutions. With this in mind, we are happy to introduce two new add-ons to Mbaza AI.
4 July 2023
In this article from Jacinta Plucinski & Akiba of Freaklabs, they share advice on organising your thoughts around building short-term and long-term sustainability considerations into your conservation technology...
21 June 2023
PhD opportunity aims at developing novel imaging methods and deep learning algorithms to describe and classify earthworms at Aarhus University.
21 June 2023
JICA, Japan’s International Cooperation Agency is seeking a digital partner with a proven track record in conservation technology as we launch a pilot project to test technologies to mitigate human-elephant conflict in...
19 June 2023
Careers
Permanent and Full Time role at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology
8 June 2023
In our first Conservation Tech Showcase case study, you'll learn about the innovative PantheraIDS, an open-source data management platform and analytical engine that processes, standardizes, and manages conservation-...
11 May 2023
The Innovation in Practice edition of Methods in Ecology and Evolution is still seeking proposals about conservation technology
6 March 2023
Article
Rainforest Connection (RFCx) is bringing back the Arbimon newsletter for 2023! We're excited to share new features and tools of the platform, what's coming up, and some insights into our projects on bioacoustic...
23 February 2023
Technology to End the Sixth Mass Extinction. Salary: $104k-144K; Location: Washington DC or Seattle WA, potential hybrid; 5+ years of Full stack development experience; Deadline March 15th - view post for full job...
10 February 2023
March 2024
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November 2023
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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Hi Steph, We appreciate the support! Thanks for the tag and your help managing the community!Patrick |
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Sensors, Acoustics, Conservation Dogs, Emerging Tech, Open Source Solutions | 10 hours 36 minutes ago | |
Congratulations! My first hydromoth was just arrived yesterday and so excited! Looking forward for the update from your project!!! |
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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 | 2 days 7 hours ago | |
Hi @zhongqimiao ,Might you have faced such an issue while using mega detectorThe conflict is caused by:pytorchwildlife 1.0.2.13 depends on torch==1.10.1pytorchwildlife 1.0.2.12... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Open Source Solutions | 1 week 2 days ago | |
Hi, this is pretty interesting to me. I plan to fly a drone over wild areas and look for invasive species incursions. So feral hogs are especially bad, but in the Everglades there... |
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AI for Conservation, Camera Traps, Open Source Solutions, Software and Mobile Apps | 1 week 5 days ago | |
Gotcha, well I look forward to seeing future iterations and following along with your progress!! |
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Autonomous Camera Traps for Insects, AI for Conservation, Emerging Tech, Open Source Solutions | 2 weeks 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! |
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Acoustics, Biologging, Emerging Tech, Open Source Solutions, Sensors | 2 weeks 3 days ago | |
Hi Danilo. you seem very passionate about this initiative which is a good start.It is an interesting coincidence that I am starting another project for the coral reefs in the... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Biologging, Camera Traps, Citizen Science, Climate Change, Community Base, Connectivity, Drones, Emerging Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Open Source Solutions, Sensors, Software and Mobile Apps, Wildlife Crime | 3 months ago | |
I would recommend going with Ubiquity 2.4Ghz devices which have performed relatively well in dense foliage of the California Redwood forests. It took a lot of tweaking to... |
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Acoustics, AI for Conservation, Connectivity, Open Source Solutions | 3 months 1 week ago | |
Fire detection is a sort of broad idea. Usually people detect the products of fire, and most often this is smoke.Many home fire detectors in the US use a radioactive source... |
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Community Base, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Data management and processing tools, Ethics of Conservation Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Open Source Solutions, Protected Area Management Tools, Sensors, Wildlife Crime | 3 months 1 week ago | |
Super cool! thank you for sharing! |
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Biologging, Open Source Solutions | 3 months 2 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 2 weeks ago | |
Hi folks! Happy 2024 and thanks in advance for your patience in case I over-used tags. If you’re using any form of natural language... |
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AI for Conservation, Citizen Science, Climate Change, Conservation Tech Training and Education, Data management and processing tools, Early Career, East Africa Community, Emerging Tech, Ending Wildlife Trafficking Online, Ethics of Conservation Tech, Human-Wildlife Conflict, Open Source Solutions, Software and Mobile Apps, Wildlife Crime, Women in Conservation Tech Programme (WiCT) | 3 months 3 weeks ago |
Unravelling freshwater turtle activity with an open source, low-cost accelerometer
6 October 2023 1:04pm
Experience with SeeedStudio T1000 as tracker and data logger.
4 September 2023 1:42pm
CIEEM 2023 Autumn Conference: Modernising Ecology: Techniques and Approaches
5 September 2023 1:59pm
Mobile App. Developer / Gibbon Research
24 August 2023 9:59am
Catch up with The Variety Hour: August 2023
14 August 2023 11:50am
Making Waves: Open Hardware as a Solution to Scaling up Bycatch Mitigation
9 July 2023 12:14pm
AI for Eagles Challenge
7 July 2023 10:03am
pneumatic artificial muscle applications in conservation tech?
5 July 2023 6:59pm
New Add-ons for Mbaza AI
4 July 2023 12:00pm
Catalog of open source conservation projects
30 June 2023 4:40pm
3 July 2023 2:53am
There is the Conservation Tech Directory! There's an 'open-source' tag you can search by too.
Making Waves: Open Hardware as a Solution to Scaling up Bycatch Mitigation
2 July 2023 11:24am
Sustained Effort: The Environmentalist’s Dilemma
21 June 2023 9:00am
PhD Position in Deep Learning for Biodiversity Monitoring: Custom Imaging Platform and Deep Learning to Classify and Phenotype Earthworms
21 June 2023 8:23am
Information Session: Technology Testing to Mitigate Human-Elephant Conflict in West Bengal
19 June 2023 11:07pm
Innovation wanted: Technology Testing to Mitigate Human-Elephant Conflict in West Bengal
19 June 2023 10:54pm
The Wildlife Society Conference
19 June 2023 5:59am
Wildlife Monitoring Engineer
8 June 2023 4:54pm
Panthera: Monitoring Wildlife with Open-Source Data Management Tools
11 May 2023 5:52pm
Call for survey participants (AI/ML practitioners)
19 April 2023 3:17pm
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
$500 micro grants for open science events
10 March 2023 1:19pm
The gathering for open science hardware is giving up grants for people putting on events that promote open science hardware
A simple and free application!
https://forum.openhardware.science/t/usd-500-microgrants-available-for-…
Proposals wanted for Innovation in Practice
6 March 2023 10:34pm
Moveapps: EMAC23 Coding Challenge
3 March 2023 7:58am
3 March 2023 3:12pm
Super initiative! I hope you get a lot of entries to this coding challenge!
6 March 2023 7:53am
Thanks Lars! Look forward to any entries from you and your colleagues. If you have an questions or suggestions, let me know.
6 March 2023 1:11pm
Hi Andrea! Although I am a keen user and observer of the Moveapps initiative, my R or Python coding skills are next to non- existing. I am therefore not likely to be contributing this time... Some day perhaps ;)
USD500 available for your workshop
6 March 2023 1:30pm
Moveapps EMAC23 Coding Challenge – Participate now!
3 March 2023 7:45am
The Arbimon newsletter is back!
23 February 2023 11:34pm
Deep Sea BRUVS Development
28 January 2023 1:41am
11 February 2023 3:07am
Hi Titus,
If the usual syntactic foam sources aren't available, an option may be to add an empty dry housing or use a larger housing for the BRUV, just to provide the buoyancy.
You can make your own syntactic foam from glass microballoons and epoxy resin, but this will require experimentation and testing. For sub-surface buoyancy, you could also use a jerry can full of cooking oil, or a coil of polypropylene rope.
Hiring Full Stack Developer at Conservation X Labs
10 February 2023 5:35pm
Software Engineer
16 January 2023 12:26pm
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