We have spent the past 9 months taking the lessons learnt from the AMI system to build an automated moth monitoring system that addresses the main issues people had with these devices:

• Affordability
• Reliability
• Ease of use

We have moved to a design that uses custom PCBs for the light, camera and compute, and battery/solar regulator. We use a hardware design that uses laser cut and 3D printed materials that reduces costs and our reliance on partners. We have a modem in built that allows a range on connectivity options including cellular that we use for status updates and data transmission. On boot the device does an an automated system self-check meaning you can leave the device confident it is fully operational, and we have a mobile app for configuration that will soon be ready to make configuration simple. Now the device is:

• 10x cheaper to make (inc. batteries and solar panel)
• 10x lighter (it fits in my laptop bag, without the solar panel [20W]!)
• 10x faster to set up

We are doing a few deployments with these systems this year, in the UK, Kenya and Anguilla, and the first deployment in the UK is doing well (but we already have a bunch of improvements we want to make!).

We hope to be able to make these available for purchase next year and are exploring a spin-out company to provide post-sale support and to invest profit in future developments. This summer we plan to test integrated microphones to monitor acoustic species as well.

If you are interested in testing, please let us know, with the caveat that the future of the project is currently up in the air pending funding (let us know if you know any great investors!!)

Tom

This little flyer has a bit more information