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Sensors / Feed

Want to talk about sensors that don't quite fit into any of our tech-specific groups? This is the place to post! From temperature and humidity to airflow and pressure sensors, there are many environmental sensing tools that can add valuable data to core conservation monitoring technologies. With the increasing availability of low-cost, open-source options, we've seen growing interest in integrating these kinds of low bandwidth sensors into existing tools. What kinds of sensors are you working with?

discussion

Camera to follow wasps/attach on wasps

I am researching on the nesting on potter wasps in Bangalore, India. I have to follow nesting wasps to observe all its activities including where it takes rest at night. I am...

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Hi @Lars_Holst_Hansen  @tom_august 

The link to the video is amazing. Thank you for it. 

The wasps that I am working on, are solitary. So, basically it is just this one female that builds the entire nest. Like what you (@tom_august) mentioned, the best option would be to keep a running camera at the nest to record the whole process of nest building. Having one placed inside will be difficult because even if we do work out a way to have lighting inside the nest, the light might be detrimental to the developing larva inside. Hence, it is likely not to be of any benefit.

I am totally smitten by the idea of having a sensor on the wasp body to track where it goes! We could get to know how far it travels to bring the prey and also to collect soil. 

@ShwetaMukundan I just saw this thesis published on tracking bees. Maybe you could use the same method? 

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discussion

Monitoring airborne biomass

We are producing hard- and software for small scale research  radars to monitor airborne biomass automatically. We can distinguish birds, bats and insects through day and...

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Looks like you want to have a read of this thread: 

Our project in very short is, setting up a sensor network for monitoring airborne biomass, mainly insects, birds and bats in near realtime, and to develop a forecast model to be used for mitigation with respect various types of human-wildlife conflicts (e.g. wind power, pesticide application, aviation). Our expertise is mainly in radar monitoring, but we aim on add insect camera information to be merged with the quantitative biomass measeurments by radar.

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discussion

Computer Science student looking to work for wildlife

Hello everyone,I am a master student in Computer Science, with a specialization in AI and computer vision. I like to work with AI, computer vision, drones, sensors, autonomous...

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Great information! Thank you for sharing this. I actually have Masters in Zoology and have done some field work in Marine Conservation. Since then I have worked in Science education and eventually switched to Software Programming. My dream has always been to work in Conservation, however life happened and I had to give up on this pipe dream. I currently work as a Developer in a contractor role for the Federal Government. Would someone with my experience have an advantage in conservation Tech?

I think the real demand in conservation tech is for transdisciplianry individuals. If you look at all the stand-out people in this space they are people who occupy multiple domains that are traditionally isolated. These are people who talk fluently in computer science and ecology, for example. Not only this, they are also people who create and imagine in ways that intertwin ideas and concepts across these domains. Its these people, thinking in these ways, that lead to innovations that really move us forward. Some of these people started out where you are now, having crossed domains through their career and then seeing opportunities to bring these skills together in imaginative ways. 

I couldn't agree more with both of these comments tom! I'm reading hundreds (literally hundreds) of applications for open WILDLABS roles at the moment, and the ones that stand out are those where it's really clear they're following genuine curiosity across different disciplines. If you're in conservation, it's the evidence of interest in tech (courses, projects, things you're trying and learning yourself). For tech, it's getting into conservation - all the things you mentioned. 

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article

Download Now: A Best Practice Guide to Satellite Technologies for Tracking Wildlife

Zoological Society of London
The Zoological Society of London, with the support of WILDLABS and the UK Space Agency, are proud to publish this new guide to satellite technologies for tracking wildlife.

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Very nice! Looking forward to checking it out!
We had this comment come in to our team from @Redfoxmeek so I'm passing along the helpful resource: Hi Folks- Thanks for the manual, can I also draw your attention to...
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Link

AI, sensors enhance wildfire detection

A pilot program in Oregon’s Willamette Valley will test how well artificial intelligence-enabled sensors can identify and characterize wildfires, which will help with responder resource allocation and boost community resilience.

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discussion

Recommendations about online courses on GPS wildlife tracking?

Hi! I'm looking into online courses to learn about different techniques to monitor wildlife using telemetry, GPS... Does anyone know about online courses in which I could...

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Hi Silvesru, 

We're hosting a tutorial tomorrow about how to use GPS satellite tages to monitor giraffe - this could be a good starting point! If you check out our youtube channel we have a lot of other talks about selecting and using tags on different species. See the links below

Steph 

https://www.youtube.com/@user-ku1bu3wn3q

 

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discussion

Commercially available connected audio sensors

Hi - can anyone advise if there is a commercially made passive audio recorder that can be powered by solar/battery and have 3g/4g connectivity - ideally with compression on the...

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Hi!

I am not aware of any such connected loggers/recorders but they would be nice. 

The AudioMoths have been revolutionary in providing audologging at a low cost but they take a lot of "data muling" (carrying SD cards in and out of the field sites) and swapping of batteries.

Cheers,

 

Hi Lars, thanks for the response. We are using lots of Song Meter Micro's atm and they have proved to be resilient. Just need something which doesn't involve going on site regularly - but get the data off. 

Rainforest Connection's (RFCx) Guardian devices may be of interest. They are solar-powered and have connectivity options for Wifi, GSM and satellite transfer. They've previously been used for detecting e.g., gunshots or chainsaws (using edge computing) and then sending positive detections/alerts to folks on the ground. RFCx also hosts Arbimon, a free, no-code software platform that facilitates analysis of audio data as well. Happy to chat more if you'd like to talk further about it! 

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discussion

Solar panels in the tropics

We are deploying automated systems in the topics and hope to use solar panels, but this closed canopy in most places I'm seeing this as a challenge.Past the obvious: 'find a...

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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

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.

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 :)

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discussion

Interview for Technologies in Conservation

Dear Wildlabs community, my name is Nikolas and I am a Master's Student from Lisbon. Like many of you, I grew up with a great passion for the wildlife that we are surrounded...

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I'd be happy to chat with you if you wanted! My expertise is within passive acoustic monitoring particularly. The Conservation Tech Directory might be useful for you in identifying relevant actors within the space.

My original background is in ecology and conservation, and am now in the elected leadership of the Gathering for Open Science Hardware which convenes researchers developing open source tech for science. I am not working on a specific piece of technology right now, but am happy to contribute some higher-level views for your interview if that helps.

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Link

New paper - Real-time alerts from AI-enabled camera traps using the Iridium satellite network: A case-study in Gabon, Central Africa

Sending real-time alerts from ecological sensors such as camera traps in areas with poor data connectivity is complex and involves integrating a large number of potentially complex hardware and software components. Our results demonstrate that these components can be successfully integrated to achieve reliable, near real-time alerts from camera traps under challenging field conditions.

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discussion

Help - Innovative ways to track elephant movement

Hi, I am working on a study to track wild elephant movement within an overlayed matrix of crop fields. We seek to understand how various landscape variables impact crop-raiding...

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Why would you want to avoid alerting the rangers ?

You don't need high tech for this; elephants leave very obvious tracks and sign. 

Hi Tyler,

Would like to introduce you to Ceres Tags products

  • Ceres Tags products come in boxes of 5, 10 and 24. 
  • There are some software partners such as Earthranger, Mapipedia and possibly CiboLabs that would be able to assist you with your mapping vegetation requirements
  • Ceres Tag does not require any towers, base stations and infrastructure. This allows you to see any movements from the heard outside of their normal herd (boundary alerts), and you will not be disturbing any of the flora and fauna with infrastructure set up. 
  • For the timing you are looking at, Ceres Wild pings directly to satellite 24 times a day. For Ceres Trace and Ceres Ranch there are 4 within 24 hours. Taking into consideration, when you set up alert areas, you will get them directly to your phone/laptop via your software of choice
  • Ceres Ranch is a reusable tag that has just been launched. Use it on this project, remove the tag and then use the tag on your next project
  • The software you choose will assist with the history of your animal movements. Ceres Tag is integrated with 11 software partners and in-development with 18 software partners https://cerestag.com/pages/software-partners
  • Understanding it is a short-term project, you would be able to use Ceres Tags products without the additional expense of setting up and removing infrastructure- towers, gateways
  • With Ceres Tag, you are purchasing the box of tags and picking a suitable software to deliver the information you require. On average, a box of 10 Ceres Trace Tags, is the same as 1 LoRaWAN tower. 

 

I just came across this interesting paper in which seismic monotoring of animals like elephants was mentioned. 

This is the study refered to:

Cheers,

Lars

 

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careers

Junior Electrical Engineer (Hardware)

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...

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careers

Senior Software Engineer

Conservify is seeking a hands-on Senior Software Engineer with front end and back end experience developing rich web and mobile applications, and a strong desire to build a best-in-class product that stands out in both...

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discussion

Cameras - pros and cons

So, what makes a good camera for an autonomous camera trap for insects?We use a web camera in our system, which seems to work well a lot of the time, it produces...

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Hi Liz, unfortunately you will still need a Raspberry Pi as host for the OAK-1 camera to reproduce our hardware setup. It's also possible to use another Linux-based system (e.g. Raspberry Pi alternatives), but I didn't test this myself and the setup process will be different to our documentation (and probably not so straightforward). I'm planning to publish the documentation website in the next weeks, but I can already send you detailed information about putting together the hardware if you are still interested.

Hello,

 

I'm working on a light weight light trap based on Bjerge et al 2021, however I opted to use an ArduCam 64mp (9152 x 6944 resolution). Designed for the pi specifically and at $60 it checks many of your criteria. I haven't put everything together yet so I can't speak for white balance and power usage, but the autofocus appears to work well from initial tests, and it is tiny.

 

Cheers,

Hubert

Awesome! it would be great to hear how you get on, maybe you can share your results here when you have them. Is the camera only for the Pi? That could be a problem for scaling as Pis are quite hard to come by at the moment.

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discussion

Rainforest SigFox available for use

Hi EveryoneJust FYI that right now we now have a SigFox gateway running to create an IoT network at the Los Amigos field station in lowland Peruvian Amazon.  Amazing forest,...

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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.! 

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.

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

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discussion

Using lidar to 3d scan animal burrows

I'm using the LiDAR Scanner in my iPad to scan black-footed cat burrows in Namibia, but I want to construct a probe with a small LiDAR Scanner on the head to scan deeper. Does...

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here's an example of what I'm doing.

 

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