Sensors already equip a range of tools to enhance monitoring capacity for conservation. Some of the higher bandwidth technologies, like camera traps and acoustic monitoring systems, have been essential elements of the conservation toolkit for decades, and thus have enough users that we've created dedicated WILDLABS groups to address them. But a whole range of lower bandwidth sensors beyond these core technologies are being increasingly integrated into conservation monitoring systems, and offer rich new insights into the wildlife and ecosystems we're all working to protect. As with many technologies, cost and access have historically been challenges to the adoption of new sensors, but with low-cost and open-source solutions on the rise, we're excited to see what the future of this space holds.
Getting Started with Sensors:
- Watch Shah Selbe's Tech Tutors episode on scaling FieldKit, an open-source conservation sensor toolbox, from a project to a successful conservation tech product.
- Check out our Virtual Meetup about Low-Cost, Open-Source Solutions in conservation tech, including a talk by Alasdair Davies on the Arribada Initiative's work with thermal sensors in early warning systems.
- For a more in-depth introduction, watch the first video in our datalogger mini-series: Freaklabs: How do I get started with Arduino?
In this group, you'll meet others who are using and innovating diverse sensors in their work, discuss ways to make sensors more effective & accessible for conservationists, learn about what sensors are already helping us accomplish in the field, and have the opportunity to ask and answer questions. Join this group to get started!
Header image: Emma Vogel, University of Tromsø
- @catwasp
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Arribada Initiative
Director at Arribada, a UK-based conservation technology research & development organisation
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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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- @Cris
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Octophin Digital
Senior Developer at Octophin Digital and constant maker.
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- @Durgananda
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- @rowan
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Octophin Digital
Jack of all Trades. I've been a zoo keeper, a conservation geneticist and a web developer who specialises in conservation projects and orgs.
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- @IsobelAshbey
- | She/her/hers
Running a Tech for Good initiative at Cambridge Consultants, looking for organisations who need help developing new technology for conservation
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Dr JOhn Read is founder and CEO of Conservation Innovation company Thylation, and founder and director of several adaptive management conservation projects . www.ecologicalhorizons.com, www.thylation.com, www.johnlread.com
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A biologist pursuing a Master's in Computer Science and Telecommunications
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Zoological Society London (ZSL)
Technical Project Manager in ZSL's Conservation Technology Unit
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Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)
A technologist and a conservationist
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Creating bold conservation tech solutions requires each of us to find the intersection between our skills and passions. In this case study on the new Aqualink reef monitoring system, a unique citizen science project...
9 June 2020
Conservation technology largely consists of two categories: tools to monitor and study wildlife and their habitats, and solutions to mitigate or prevent negative human impacts. The fight against poaching in particular...
4 June 2020
Funding
The 2020 Hackaday Prize competition has begun! This year, Conservation X Labs has partnered with the Hackaday Prizes as one of four nonprofits seeking tech-based solutions to urgent challenges. Conservation X Labs'...
26 May 2020
In the fourth installment of his case study series focusing on preventing human-wildlife conflict, Aditya Gangadharan discusses how local communities develop, test, and implement their own solutions. This article...
19 May 2020
In this three-part WILDLABS feature article, we'll take a look at the various technologies used to fight the greatest threat to endangered condors, explore the innovations that may change the way we study and understand...
5 May 2020
Funding
Want to compete in the iWildCam 2020 competition identifying species in camera trap images to support biodiversity monitoring efforts and automatic species classification model improvements? Because the Workshop on Fine...
4 May 2020
The 2020 Arm Research Summit is accepting submissions from all research disciplines focusing on the role of technology in solving global challenges. Submissions should reflect the potential of sustainable, secure, and...
24 April 2020
Article
How does tracking technology meet the many challenges specific to monitoring birds within their home ranges and over long distances during migration? WILDLABS community member Virginie Perilhon from Xerius Tracking...
23 April 2020
Article
At the 2018 London Illegal Wildlife Trade Conference, we announced the WILDLABS Tech Hub, an accelerator programme created to support the development and scaling of groundbreaking technological solutions addressing the ...
13 April 2020
In the third part of his series of case studies focusing on preventing human-wildlife conflict within communities, Aditya Gangadharan looks at how one village in North Bengal maximised the potential of an early alert...
10 April 2020
The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's MARS ocean observatory may someday make conducting deep-sea research more accessible and affordable thanks to Deep-Sea Connect, their new wireless system engineered to ...
31 March 2020
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...
18 March 2020
December 2023
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Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
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I don't think KEH would influence accelerometry at all.One other way to think about it is - the KEH is a movement sensor itself.The GPS is quite a severe factor in the energy... |
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Biologging, Emerging Tech, Sensors | 1 year 9 months ago | |
Hello! I have 2 rescued sulcata tortoises in my care. I would like to put some kind of tracking device on them so I can find them if they... |
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Sensors | 1 year 9 months ago | |
On the topic of potential sources for harvested power, and in the category of "out there"... I have spent some considerable (likely too much) time exploring harvesting... |
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Sensors | 1 year 10 months ago | |
Hey all!I am Ayush, a core team member of my school's Robotics Club (Center For Innovation, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras). There... |
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Drones, Sensors, Wildlife Crime, Early Career | 1 year 10 months ago | |
Dear Community,Together with Hackster.io, Seeed Studio is very happy to jointly organize “IoT Into the Wild Contest for Sustainable Plant... |
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AI for Conservation, Connectivity, Emerging Tech, Open Source Solutions, Sensors | 1 year 11 months ago | |
What exact nutrients or parameters are you trying to measure? |
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Sensors | 2 years ago | |
Iray PH35. like a DV . thermal camera. 640*328,35mm. could make videos. 2400 USD, china product, easy ship to Vietnam. 1km is the range to check monkeys... |
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Sensors | 2 years 2 months ago | |
Hi, Can you clarify what you mean by "does not work"? If I were to guess, I'd say the firmware temperature compensation tables for the load cell tops out at 40... |
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Sensors | 2 years 4 months ago | |
Do you mean the sensor itself (that you're going make a tag out of) or a datalogger that records heart rate (sensor incoporated into a tag already)? Vectronic make some good... |
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Sensors | 2 years 7 months ago | |
Dear Wildlabs community, Not a 100 'wild' issue but this is a 'wild' collaboration we have. I'm collaborating... |
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Sensors | 2 years 7 months ago | |
Hi @LuciKirkpatrick Aha! A great strategy. I thought it might have been a 'wake on radio' solution, but the overlapping wait time is a really nice solution. Again... |
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Sensors | 2 years 7 months ago | |
Hi Wildlabbers! Tomorrow Shah Selbe will be our Tech Tutor and guide us through how to turn an innovative conservation tech... |
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Open Source Solutions, Sensors | 2 years 7 months ago |
New paper - Real-time alerts from AI-enabled camera traps using the Iridium satellite network: A case-study in Gabon, Central Africa
13 January 2023 12:12am
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.
New Paper - Evaluation of thermal imaging as a tool for assessing occupancy of enclosed nests
13 January 2023 12:06am
The authors "tested the use of a thermal imager to assess the occupancy of enclosed nests, using nest-box populations of small passerines. Based on a thermal image of each nest box, observers were able to predict nest-box occupancy with a combined success rate of 85.9%."
Conservation Technology Intern (Vietnam)
11 January 2023 5:00pm
Help - Innovative ways to track elephant movement
28 October 2022 4:50pm
7 November 2022 12:52am
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.
Live Q&A Discussion on Ceres Tag: An animal monitoring Solution! | WILDLABS
Hey Everyone,Are you ready for this next Live Q&A Session? If you're looking for an effective animal monitoring solution, you might want to Join us here in a few minutes at 9am EAT|4pm AEST where Lewis Frost, COO of Ceres Tag, will help us unpack the IoT devices they have for animal monitoring.In this session, Lewis will take us through the features of Ceres Tag, some of their interesting projects so far, some models on animal monitoring, factors to consider when choosing an animal monitoring tag, and much more! A few things you need to know about the Live Q&A session:The session will be moderated, but you can ask questions during and after the session e.g. If you need clarification on a question/answer, you are free to ask. To ask a question that is linked to a specific answer, kindly always press the ‘Reply to @Frostl007' button, type in your question then save to post it.To ensure a proper flow of the discussion, kindly be sure to use the 'Reply to @Frostl007' Before moving to each next question, we will give a ~3 minute window to allow you to ask any questions you have, but if you miss that window, you are totally okay asking the question afterwards.If you have any trouble viewing the questions or replies, please try and Refresh the page If you are present in this session and don’t have any comments, we’d be very happy to see you react using an emoji so that we know you are following through the session! I'm really looking forward to an amazing discussion!Thank you,Netty.
wildlabsnet
14 December 2022 10:49am
I just came across this interesting paper in which seismic monotoring of animals like elephants was mentioned.
This is the study refered to:
Seismic savanna: machine learning for classifying wildlife and behaviours using ground‐based vibration field recordings
Our planet is facing its sixth mass extinction, with hundreds of species disappearing largely because of human activity. To mitigate this existential threat of biodiversity loss, we must monitor and ...
ZSL PublicationsCheers,
Lars
Junior Electrical Engineer (Hardware)
9 December 2022 5:04pm
Senior Software Engineer
9 December 2022 5:01pm
Senior Product & Production Manager (Maternity Cover)
9 December 2022 3:07pm
Cameras - pros and cons
21 September 2022 2:04pm
23 November 2022 2:58pm
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.
7 December 2022 1:03am
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
8 December 2022 4:06pm
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.
PhD - Sensory ecology of vespine wasps
8 December 2022 12:47pm
Tech and Biodiversity Conference, London
15 November 2022 2:07pm
Whats de best open source methane analyzer for soil?
21 October 2022 3:36pm
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
Using lidar to 3d scan animal burrows
17 October 2022 4:21pm
17 October 2022 4:23pm
here's an example of what I'm doing.
New paper: Benthic animal-borne sensors & citizen science combine to validate ocean modelling
10 October 2022 4:15pm
"We develop the use of benthic species as animal oceanographers by combining archival (depth, temperature) data from animal-borne tags, passive acoustic telemetry & citizen-science mark-recapture records for the flapper skate in Scotland."
Frontiers Symposium: Digital tools for reversing environmental degradation
5 October 2022 10:23am
Roddenberry Foundation’s Catalyst Fund
4 October 2022 11:13am
MIT engineers build a battery-free, wireless underwater camera
26 September 2022 2:59pm
Mangrove soundscape
27 August 2022 4:57pm
29 August 2022 2:47pm
You might check out the devices listed in the Conservation Tech Directory - you can search for 'acoustic recorder' or 'ARU' or something like that.
The most common off-the-shelf models (other than Frontier Labs' BARLTs mentioned above😊) are Open Acoustic Devices Audiomoths & Hydromoths (which may be particularly useful for you since they come in completely watertight cases that can be stuck underwater for deployments), Wildlife Acoustics' SongMeter series, and Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Swift units.
30 August 2022 10:10pm
Camilo--
Are you interested only in airborne sounds or do you want to deploy hydrophones? That decision would inform a lot of other decisions about your purchase of equipment, as would having a clearer picture of your budget.
23 September 2022 5:39pm
Hi there Camilo,
What an interesting project! If you are looking for a lower cost, but effective tools for acoustic monitoring you might want to look into two options:
SoundTraps - are very commonly used and perform quite well:
FrontPage
Welcome to the cutting edge of underwater acoustic recording technology. SoundTrap hydrophones combine the latest low power electronics with meticulously crafted software to create instruments that perform in a league of their own. Check them out here…
SonarPoints - these are also a great instrument option:
page/sonarpoint | Desert Star Systems
The SonarPoint system is the third generation of Desert Stars passive underwater acoustics monitoring toolkits.
Desert Star SystemsAvian 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.
The planet matters. People matter. Location matters.
23 September 2022 12:16pm
Movement Ecology Field Team and Data Coordinator: Osa Conservation [Open until filled)
22 September 2022 11:55pm
Senior Conservation Technology Expert Position (Consultancy) with the Global Wildlife Program
22 September 2022 5:35pm
Workshop: Building UK Partnerships for Conservation Technology
22 September 2022 3:02pm
World Ocean Tech and Innovation Summit
13 September 2022 1:12pm
Catch Up with the Variety Hour: September 2022
6 September 2022 12:31pm
Virtual fencing / Kinetic energy harvesting / Holistic grazing
16 June 2022 7:12am
26 July 2022 11:13am
Hi,
One daily fix is planned for now. This will be challenging enough for KEH :)
Kr, D-
31 July 2022 5:15pm
I see, thanks!
One daily fix is quite limiting.
Do you have an idea how KEH might affect accelerometry?
Cheers,
2 September 2022 11:05am
I don't think KEH would influence accelerometry at all.
One other way to think about it is - the KEH is a movement sensor itself.
The GPS is quite a severe factor in the energy balance of the system, so if the data is perhaps not transmitted constantly, more frequent locks could be achieved. I believe GPS transceivers are becoming more and more efficient and the KEH enabled GPS should become an option soon.
Kr,
D-
Conservation Technology Research Internship
26 August 2022 4:58pm
Ceres Wild Rhino application
22 August 2022 1:29am
29 September 2022 4:05am
Post Doctoral researcher - DNA species detection technology
15 August 2022 4:50pm
Research Technician - Unoccupied Aircraft Systems Pilot and Geospatial Analyst
10 August 2022 10:40pm
4 November 2022 5:24pm
Why would you want to avoid alerting the rangers ?
You don't need high tech for this; elephants leave very obvious tracks and sign.