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Header image: Laura Kloepper, Ph.D.

discussion

WILDLABS Awards 2024 - Statistics

At 23:55 yesterday, the application window for WILDLABS 2024 came to a close. First, I would like to thank the 191 applicants and everyone who played a role in spreading the...

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Gender representation in WILDLABS Awards 2024

@alexrood and I dived into WILDLABS Awards data to study women representation. 

Here are the results and some of them are really compelling:

Check out this breakdown of how the WILDLABS Awards 2024 applicants were using tech to address different conservation issues. Special thanks to @Adrien_Pajot for gathering the data!

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discussion

Needing help from the community: Bioacoustics survey

I'm reaching out because I'm currently conducting a research project titled "UX-Driven Exploration of Unsupervised Deep-Learning in Marine Mammals Bioacoustic Conservation" for my...

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Was great to chat with you Sofia and I would encourage others in the Acoustics community to help provide input for Sofia's study!

Thank you so much for your encouraging words! I'm thrilled to hear that you enjoyed our conversation, and I truly appreciate your support in spreading the word about my survey within the Acoustics community. Input from individuals like yourself is incredibly valuable to my study, and I'm eager to gather as much insight as possible. If you know of anyone else who might be interested in participating, please feel free to share the survey link with them. Once again, thank you for your support—it means a lot to me!

Best regards,
Sofia

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discussion

Voice activated recording devices on satellite collars

Hi everyone,I'm cooperating with a project that will be placing satellite collars on Eurasian lynx and their prey species. I have a PhD student starting this year who is...

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I am sure Simon can chime in with exact specifications. I do not have it with me now. The centre distance between the attachment holes at each in end is 20mm wich will fit the standard holes in a collar from Vectronics Aerospace. 



Simon posted images of the logger attached to a collar on a spotted Hyeana here: https://twitter.com/chamaillejammes/status/1441657479612542990

We are studying muskoxen which are exposed to a polar night of between 3-4 month where the sun does not come over the horizon. On the other hand it also means that it will be continously OVER the horizon during the 3-4 summer months.

We are keeping an eye out for kinetic energy harvesting and there has been some interesting progress recently:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0285930

@M_Stanton , you provide a nice list of uses of animal borne audio. We could add environmental sounds both abiotic and biotic.

We would LOVE to use audio more for ground truthing behavioural states and we would LOVE if the audio recordings could be GPS time synced...

@jared , it sounds interesting with the mentioned increased capabilities of the Iridium system. Can you link to any references for that?

Cheers, 

Lars

 

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discussion

Timelapse Infrared Camera Suggestions

I am researching cameras for my thesis project researching harbor seals. I need a trail camera that can take infrared images in Timelapse mode. Does anyone have any...

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I doubt there is an off the shelf solution. Likely you will have to build one. Again I think the FLIR leptons could be of value here.

@krasi_georgiev  you have worked with Leptons before ? Is this something you are able to advise on ?

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discussion

Camera Traps batteries waste

Hi Wildlabs community! I am wondering how you or your country handle the battery wastes after the Camera Traps - including one-off alkaline and Lithium. In Indonesia, there is...

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Thanks for the update @Frank_van_der_Most . I have been curious about the AA Li-Ion/Li-Po batteries and how they perform. The sudden drop in reported voltage will likely be from the internal voltage regulator switching off when the internal cell gets to the low voltage threshold (usually around 3V) to avoid damage to the cell. Looking now at a discharge curve they show a constant 1.5V, then a step down to 1.1V before dropping to zero. I don't know how you can possibly test these externally to know how much energy they have left until you hit the 1.1V step. 

I've used AA rechargeable almost exclusively for many years now. I try to get rechargeables sourced from Japan (Panasonic Eneloop and Fujitsu), but have also used Eveready  and EBL. I've used them in Reconyx, Scoutguard, Loreda and other low end cameras. One option you could try if it's in your budget is the solar powered camera traps. You need one set of rechargeables when you first deploy them but don't need to change the batteries afterwards. I'm trialling the Gardepro model that a local supplier sells. I intend to deploy them high up in trees to monitor nest boxes and tree hollows, so regular access to change batteries and SD cards was going to be difficult.

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event

SMART Global Congress 2024

Join WILDLABS at the first SMART World Congress, a global gathering of conservation professionals using SMART, the world's most widely used protected area management solution. 

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discussion

non-invasive technique to apply GPS collars without catching?

Dear all, I was wondering if they were "passive" techniques to "install" GPS collar or other GPS devices on a terrestrial animal ? Just a discussion...

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A lorawan based tracker here:



 

I would expect, but don't know, that a lorawan one should be able to have a longer range and lifetime based on the amount of power needed to reliably transmit the data. Sorry, for some reason this posted twice, can't find a delete button.

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event

WILDLABS NYC Networking Event

*Join WILDLABS on March 4th in NYC for a conservation tech networking event alongside WWF, USFWS, IFAW, Microsoft, and more! *Sold Out*

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careers

Senior Software Engineer, Skylight

Join the mission to help tackle IUU fishing with cutting-edge tech! The Allan Institute for AI is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to accelerate efforts to make sure those working to restore our ocean have the tools...

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careers

Technical Field Officer

Arribada is seeking a motivated Technical Research Officer to manage and co-ordinate the regular deployment, configuration and testing of conservation technologies developed for Operation Pangolin in Cameroon and Gabon.

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discussion

Li-ion rechargeable batteries suddenly drain

I am currently testing a camera trap with rechargeable Li-ion batteries and untill a week ago they were doing much better than the NiMH rechargeable batteries that I used before....

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Hi Frank,

Yes, I agree.  There is a halfway-house solution if you take a look at the Energizer Ultimate Lithium range of batteries.  They have superior life to alkaline batteries (3.5Ah in a single AA cell), though they are of course still one-time use.  They would also work a little better with your battery monitor since they have a graceful degradation between 1.8V down to 1.5V, but then they fall off a cliff ;-)

A multi meter would probably not be enough, unless you have a very fancy one. To get the energy use, you need to be able to integrate the current drawn over time.  Something like this: Otii Arc Pro

I don't know how much you paid for these, but Amazon Basics has a line of rechargeable AA batteries, including a high capacity version which can store 2400 mAh which is a little more than the ones you're using.  (I've seen even more capacity with other manufacturers.)

You might also want to consider avoiding batteries with USB ports in the future. It seems to me like just an additional thing that can break, especially if moisture could be an issue. 

Thanks for the link, Amanda. The price of $900 is a bit too steep for me, but at least I now know a bit better what you meant with a power analyser.

I can't remember either what I paid for the batteries, but I try to avoid buying stuff from mr. Bezos, because he is rich enough as far as I am concerned.

The moisture issue slipped my mind when I was in Europe. As far as  I remember, I liked the usb ports because I bought the batteries as a test and I didn't want to buy a separate charger, as I thought one needed one designed for Li-ion batteries. The usb ports made that possible.

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discussion

WiCT active?

Hi to WiCT - is this group still active?  I am new to the discussions board and would love to connect.  Paola (from Mozambique)

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Hi Paola! It's Meredith (former Pringle lab in Gorongosa) - great to see you here! Would love to touch base about the WiCT network and programming - we ran a similar programme to this in Gorongosa two years ago and are gearing up for another women's session in Gorongosa this August. It would be great to involve you if you're interested? 

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discussion

Tools for automating image augmentation 

Does anyone know of tools to automate image augmentation and manipulation. I wish to train ML image recognition models with images in which the target animal (and false targets)...

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Hi @arky !

Thanks for your reply.

I am running into pytorch/torchvision incompatibility issues when trying to run your script.

Which versions are you using?

Best regards,

Lars

 

@Lars_Holst_Hansen  Here is the information you requested. Also run Yolov8 in multiple remote environments without any issues.  Perhaps you'll need to use a virtual environment (venv et al) or conda to remedy incompatibility issues. 

$ yolo checks
Ultralytics YOLOv8.1.4 🚀 Python-3.10.12 torch-1.13.1+cu117 CUDA:0 (Quadro T2000, 3904MiB)
Setup complete ✅ (16 CPUs, 62.5 GB RAM, 465.0/467.9 GB disk)

OS                  Linux-6.5.0-17-generic-x86_64-with-glibc2.35
Environment         Linux
Python              3.10.12
Install             pip
RAM                 62.54 GB
CPU                 Intel Core(TM) i7-10875H 2.30GHz
CUDA                11.7

matplotlib          ✅ 3.5.1>=3.3.0
numpy               ✅ 1.26.3>=1.22.2
opencv-python       ✅ 4.7.0.72>=4.6.0
pillow              ✅ 10.2.0>=7.1.2
pyyaml              ✅ 6.0.1>=5.3.1
requests            ✅ 2.31.0>=2.23.0
scipy               ✅ 1.11.4>=1.4.1
torch               ✅ 1.13.1>=1.8.0
torchvision         ✅ 0.14.1>=0.9.0
tqdm                ✅ 4.66.1>=4.64.0
psutil              ✅ 5.9.8
py-cpuinfo          ✅ 9.0.0
thop                ✅ 0.1.1-2209072238>=0.1.1
pandas              ✅ 1.5.3>=1.1.4
seaborn             ✅ 0.12.2>=0.11.0
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discussion

Seeking Advice on Thermal Drones for Night-Time Elephant Observation

Hi everyone,I'm looking for an affordable yet effective thermal drone to observe elephants at night in Sri Lanka, aiming to address human-elephant conflict. Has anyone used...

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Hi Nilaksha (and everyone else),

I have been looking at the application of thermal to improve the automated detection through RGB imagery. One of the large drawbacks of thermal is the lower resolution. This is impart cost but also down to basic physics, IR light has a much longer wavelength and therefore a sensor can't have as many 'pixels' on it compared to an RGB sensor. This implies that you either need a thermal camera lens with a longer focal length, which reduces the area you cover, or you need to fly much lower. The drawback of the latter is you cover much less ground per unit of time/battery and you have the potential of disturbing the animals.

I know that DJI have recently released a starlight camera combined with thermal (DJI Enterprise Zenmuse H20N). It looks very impressive but I have not yet managed to test it. Being self-funded as well I have opted for hiring in a drone company to fly for me with the state of the art equipment rather than buying and flying myself. 

Hope that helps and keen to hear how you get on!

@PaulAllin Thanks for your valuable insights. Zenmuse H20N seems to be very powerful and useful in this case. However, I'm looking for a more affordable option for a self-funded research. 

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discussion

Mothbox + Mothbeam Update: 4

Prepping for DeploymentIt's been mega busy at dinalab here in panama as me, Kitty, and @Hubertszcz prepped for his big field deployment in western panama.We finalized our designs...

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We did some more testing with the Mothbeam in the forest. It's the height of dry season right now, so not many moths came out, but the mothbeam shined super bright and attracted a whole bunch of really tiny things that swarmed a lot

 

 

and some nocturnal bees

 

you could also see the mothbeam's aura from  far away in the forest! so that was impressive!

I also tested out attaching a 12V USB booster cable to the Mothbeam, and it works 

 

nice! So you can attach regular USB 5V battery packs to the mothbeam as well!

 

 

 

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article

Gender Representation in the WILDLABS Awards 2024 Submissions

Alex Rood
Data from the WILDLABS Awards 2024 submissions confirms what our State of Conservation Tech survey unveiled: women are an underrepresented group in conservation tech. 

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Interesting. The disparity at times crops from culture and this has a history especially in Africa. But all hope is not lost. Previously technical courses lacked female students....
Hi, thanks for sharing this report. Did you do the same analysis on the awardees, and if so can you share the numbers?
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discussion

Data Logger Suggestions

Hello, I have been using a data logger in my tag that doesn't seem to be working for our needs any longer. I was wondering if anyone might be able to suggest one they use and...

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Hi Andrea,

The OpenLog Artemis might be an option. I haven't used one of these yet, but its what I immediately thought of. Built in real time clock and IMU that records to microSD. It has four 14-bit ADCs and I2C connectors for the 'Qwiic' or 'grove' sensor boards. I'm not sure if it has programmable on/off cycles with the clock but you may find an existing project that does this. 

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