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WILDLABS logoWildlabs.net : The conservation technology network

Group

Animal Movement / Feed

Animal movement technologies are revolutionizing our understanding of wildlife, revealing insights like migration patterns, key corridors, and the impacts of mounting pressures on natural systems. As we continue to develop these tools and work toward translating movement data into actionable insights, coordination between efforts is essential. This group is a place for the animal movement community to connect and discuss our efforts to advance the field.

Group curators

discussion

GPS collars for goats

Sara

15 February 2022 3:45pm

Hi everyone, WILDLABS newbie, so please bear with me. Currently inherited a project focusing on making grazing better managed / more sustainable on a tiny (67 sqkm),...

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Kim Lane

19 August 2022 2:00am

We were the world first commercial direct to satellite ear tag. There are collar base solutions that work direct to satellite. 

Lars Holst Hansen

3 January 2023 7:40pm

I have no experience with LoraWAN tracking myself but just wanted share a few relevant links for a LoraWAN wildlife use case and a few suppliers of LoraWAN trackers:

https://www.hilashamon.com/lora-technology-for-wildlife-tracking/

An alternative to LoraWAN could be UHF based systems like:

http://www.xeriustracking.fr/bioloc-transmitters/

 

10 min fix intervals is quite high. You may need solar powered devices to keep up this high frequency.

Good luck!

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discussion

Margo Luminous Beta Launch: New Tracking Collar Manufacturer

Jared Marley

20 February 2020 5:30pm

Hi Wildlabs Community, Very excited to announce that we've released the beta version of our new Luminous tracking collar! Our beta release is already nearly fully...

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Lars Holst Hansen

3 January 2023 5:05pm

Thanks Brett! I am not looking to buy anything any time soon but I am always curious to follow any new progress and developments in the market of biologgers.

Regarding the accelerometry I am curious to know which frequencies are supported. Have you considered magnetometry, too? This could obviously be useful in dead reckoning but also for inferring behavioural states (as shown in this paper).

Brett Muir

3 January 2023 5:36pm

No problem. I believe Jared was wanting to share more about our experience developing a collar on Wildlabs when there is time. I'm more on the mechanical end of things. Right now we are focused on reliability and longevity. Thanks for the paper I'll check it out! 

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discussion

Workshop Invite: Building Partnerships between Conservation Tech and the UK Space Sector

Stephanie O'Donnell

22 September 2022 3:50pm

Hi everyone, In collaboration with our partners over at the Satellite Applications Catapult, we are hosting an in person workshop to build strategic partnerships for...

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Vance Russell

5 December 2022 3:10pm

Hi Steph,

If it's not too late, I'm very interested in this workshop.

Best,

V

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careers

Shark Lab Data Analyst

Carly Batist

24 October 2022 7:12pm

This position (at California State University, Long Beach) provides data management & analysis support to Shark Lab research operations including shark tagging, active tracking, receiver data, AUV & UAV data...

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discussion

Water leakage in aquatic tags at deeper depths

Hari

12 October 2022 12:37pm

Hi FolksDoes anyone have experience building their own aquatic tags? We are building a GPS-LoRa telemetry system. Although all the functions are working properly, we are having...

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Thomas Gray

21 October 2022 4:12pm

I'll add -  avoid fast curing resins/epoxies for, at least, two reasons: 

1. The exothermic reaction between the two compounds can cause sensor issues (ie: heat).

2. Air bubbles will form (and cure) more easily in fast curing compounds.

Hari

23 October 2022 2:51pm

Thanks Thomas!! We do use slow curing resins with no heat generation

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discussion

Rainforest SigFox available for use

Roland Kays

26 August 2022 6:09pm

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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Carly Batist

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.! 

Antoine Ede

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.

Roland Kays

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

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Link

New paper: Benthic animal-borne sensors & citizen science combine to validate ocean modelling

Carly Batist

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."

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Read "Benthic animal-borne sensors and citizen science combine to validate ocean modelling | Scientific Reports" on Nature

Benthic animal-borne sensors and citizen science combine to validate ocean modelling | Scientific Reports

Developments in animal electronic tagging and tracking have transformed the field of movement ecology, but interest is also growing in the contributions of tagged animals to oceanography. Animal-borne sensors can address data gaps, improve ocean model skill and support model validation, but previous studies in this area have focused almost exclusively on satellite-telemetered seabirds and seals. Here, for the first time, we develop the use of benthic species as animal oceanographers by combining archival (depth and temperature) data from animal-borne tags, passive acoustic telemetry and citizen-science mark-recapture records from 2016–17 for the Critically Endangered flapper skate (Dipturus intermedius) in Scotland. By comparing temperature observations to predictions from the West Scotland Coastal Ocean Modelling System, we quantify model skill and empirically validate an independent model update. The results from bottom-temperature and temperature-depth profile validation (5,324 observations) fill a key data gap in Scotland. For predictions in 2016, we identified a consistent warm bias (mean = 0.53 °C) but a subsequent model update reduced bias by an estimated 109% and improved model skill. This study uniquely demonstrates the use of benthic animal-borne sensors and citizen-science data for ocean model validation, broadening the range of animal oceanographers in aquatic environments.

Nature
discussion

Humidity/Temperature/Light Level logger

David Bradley

27 September 2022 12:01am

I am looking for a small logger that can collect humidity, temperature, and light levels while being hung from a fishing line over a cliff. I have found units that can collect the...

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Rick Jordan

7 October 2022 4:50pm

Hi David,

I've used our monitoring platform, PRTG (www.paessler.com), with environmental sensors for a server room, which included temperature and humidity. The monitoring platform is free up to a certain amount of sensors, so if this would be all you were using it for then it would be completely free of cost. Some hardware devices for environmental monitoring they have listed in one of their knowledge base articles are listed below, none of which I've used, but perhaps one of these would work, and if not, it will put you on the right track if you wanted to pursue this type of solution for what you are looking to do:

"All of these vendors offer physical sensors that can provide data about their environment. Connected to some kind of SNMP-enabled “management box” these sensors become network-enabled."

Cheers!

Rick

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discussion

Live Q&A Discussion on Ceres Tag: An animal monitoring Solution!

Netty Cheruto

17 August 2022 6:57am

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...

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Carly Batist

26 September 2022 9:17pm

Is there any sort of automatic drop-off mechanism for the tags? Or does the animal need to be re-captured to take the tag off?

Kim Lane

29 September 2022 3:52am

Hi Carly,

There are no built in automatic drop-off mechanism for the tags. We do have customers that have purchased and incorporated the tag into different types of harness and collars. 

Happy to discuss further with you to understand your use case. Head over to www.cerestag.com and there is a "let's talk" button. 

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discussion

Conservation Tech Directory - new update!

Carly Batist

29 August 2022 2:38pm

New directory update from @gracieermi & I! And an extra special one as we've just passed our 1-year anniversary! Super exciting to see how far this has come! Check it out:...

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Liz Ferguson

23 September 2022 5:26pm

Congrats on the milestone Carly and Gracie!

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Link

New paper: A novel method for identifying coded tags recorded on aquatic acoustic monitoring systems

Carly Batist

26 September 2022 2:11pm

Authors demonstrated "a low cost, simple method to support acoustic tag surveys by identifying tags both from direct acoustic recordings & by reconstructing code packets from processed C-POD data. Method was applied to decode tag detections from bass & Twaite shad."

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discussion

Avian nest box monitoring 

jasonsali

14 September 2022 2:30pm

Hi. I’m hoping there’s a guru out there who can advise on tech for monitoring conditions inside avian nest boxes? Links to data loggers and endoscopes they’ve used successfully...

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jasonsali

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  

Colin Cook

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.

Nigel Butcher

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.

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discussion

Virtual fencing / Kinetic energy harvesting / Holistic grazing

David Blažević

16 June 2022 7:12am

Hi everyone, Stephanie invited me to share some recent developments in Finalnd.I'm David and I'm a mechanical engineer from Rijeka, Croatia, working as a Marie Curie postdoc at...

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Lars Holst Hansen

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,

David Blažević

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-

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article

Ceres Wild Rhino application 

Kim Lane

22 August 2022 1:29am

An update on Ceres Tags products that are being used in conservation 

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Kim Lane

29 September 2022 4:05am

Some updates and a news report on the Malilangwe Trust application of devices; Ceres Trace and Ceres Wild
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Link

Sydney seals: From Manly to Malabar, marine life sprawls across a city

Stephanie O'Donnell

8 August 2022 12:59pm

This came to me by way of my dad over the weekend, but it's is full of familiar names and has started popping up from other places in the conservation tech network. It's a gorgeous visual story via The Sydney Morning Herald, telling the tail of the return of fur seals in and...

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discussion

SnapperGPS device giveaway

Alasdair Davies

5 August 2022 12:53pm

Hi all,There's a rare opportunity to acquire free (only postage and packaging is payable) GPS biologging hardware to trial the new SnapperGPS board developed by two PhD students...

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