Group curators
Pen-Yuan Hsing
- @Nycticebus_scientia
- | he/they
MammalWeb.org
Amanda Matthes
Brianna Johns
- @briannajohns
- | she/they
Gathering for Open Science Hardware (GOSH)
Despite critical advancements in the tech solutions available to conservationists worldwide, many existing tools are cost-prohibitive in the landscapes that need them most. Additionally, those who create low-cost and open-source alternatives to pricey market tech often operate on tight budgets themselves, meaning they need more resources to promote their solutions to a broader market. We need increased communication around these solutions to highlight their availability, share lessons learned in their creation, and avoid duplication of efforts.
This group is a place to share low-cost, open-source devices for conservation; describe how they are used, including what needs they are addressing and how they fit into the wider conservation tech market; identify the obstacles in advancing the capacity of these technologies; and to discuss the future of these solutions, particularly their sustainability and how best to collaborate moving forward. We welcome contributions from both makers and users, whether active or prospective.
Here is how we see the current OSS space and how this group plans to change it by supporting both makers and users:
Many users do not appreciate the significant benefits of open-source tech. This group will educate users about the advantages and the need for open-source tech, specifically in the context of ecology work. We achieve this by stimulating regular discussions on the forum and by encouraging and supporting users to use open-source tools wherever possible.
Building OSS can be difficult. We want to support both established and potential makers who wish to develop OSS. The OSS group is a place where makers can find funding opportunities, ask current and potential users questions, and share their technologies.
Using OSS can be difficult. We also want to support adopters of OSS tech. We do this by offering a place for users to share challenges they face and crowdsource advice on things like technology choice or technical support.
Makers do not know what users want or need. The OSS group is a place that facilitates conversations between makers and users. This will give users a voice and ensure that makers are aware of the needs of users, enabling them to build better solutions.
The community is small and scattered. We want to grow an inclusive community of OSS practitioners. Our goal is to become the go-to place for discussions on the topic where people feel a sense of belonging.
Resources for getting started
- How do I use open source remote sensing data in Google Earth Engine? | Tech Tutors
- How do I use open source remote sensing data to monitor fishing? | Tech Tutors
- Low Cost, Open Source Solutions | Virtual Meetup
- What would an open source conservation technology toolkit look like? | Discussion
- December 2024 Open Source Solutions Community Call
Header image: Shawn F. McCracken
Group curators
- @Nycticebus_scientia
- | he/they
MammalWeb.org
Co-founded citizen science camera-trapping project with interest in developing 100% open source wildlife tech. Advocate for open science/open research. Former Community Councilor of the Gathering for Open Science Hardware.
- 4 Resources
- 25 Discussions
- 3 Groups
trying to understand and improve the welfare of all animals that can suffer
- 4 Resources
- 6 Discussions
- 7 Groups
- @briannajohns
- | she/they
Gathering for Open Science Hardware (GOSH)
Interested in the application of open source technologies for conservation research.
- 9 Resources
- 5 Discussions
- 4 Groups
No showcases have been added to this group yet.
- 0 Resources
- 2 Discussions
- 8 Groups
- @srankin
- | she/her
NOAA Fisheries
Bioacoustics researcher with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
- 0 Resources
- 2 Discussions
- 16 Groups
Software engineer working on natural resource management technology.
- 0 Resources
- 3 Discussions
- 6 Groups
My research focuses on using Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) to study endangered species, including carnivores, chiropterans (bats), and lizards, as well as their microbiomes.
- 1 Resources
- 4 Discussions
- 19 Groups
Co-creator of an Andean forest RNSC in the Colombian Andes
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 2 Groups
- @georg_strunck
- | he/him
Delft University of Technology & SPOTS | Strategic Protection Of Threatened Species
MSc Student in Aerospace/Robotics @TU_Delft | Engineer & Project Manager @StrategicProtectionOfThreatenedSpecies (SPOTS) | Robotics Engineer @BiodivX with @ETH Zürich for the xPrize rainforest competition
- 1 Resources
- 9 Discussions
- 10 Groups
- @KB
- | she/her
Wildlife ecologist specializing in animal movement modeling and habitat selection with a strong interest in conservation policy and management decisions.
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 17 Groups
Cardiff University
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 3 Groups
Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
Project leader of MoveApps | Movement ecology
- 1 Resources
- 5 Discussions
- 5 Groups
Data Scientist
- 0 Resources
- 8 Discussions
- 12 Groups
- @Valluc
- | he/him
- 0 Resources
- 0 Discussions
- 4 Groups
- @Britneecheney
- | her/she
My name is Britnee Cheney. I am a keeper and trainer for three North American River Otters at an aquarium in Utah. I have recently started a conservation program for this species in the wild and am looking for resources and mentors to help me with my camera trapping.
- 0 Resources
- 13 Discussions
- 7 Groups
Article
September 2024 OSS paper round-up
Amanda Matthes
In this instalment: BioSense for environmental sensing, a UV data logger, KRILLSCAN for estimating krill biomass and more!
3 October 2024
Article
Project Spotlight: SnapperGPS
Brianna Johns
SnapperGPS is an open source GNSS receiver for non-real-time wildlife tracking. Learn more about the project below!
1 October 2024
Article
August 2024 OSS paper round-up
Amanda Matthes
In this instalment: HyperCoast for hyperspectral data, Fluxbot 2.0 for soil CO2 flux sensing, BirdVoxDetect for identifying bird calls, snipit for single nucleotide polymorphism visualisation and more!
15 September 2024
Article
Project Spotlight: OpenFlexure Microscope
Brianna Johns
The OpenFlexure Microscope is a low-cost, open source, and customizable microscope used worldwide. Find out more about the project and its benefits to conservation and ecology research in this post!
22 August 2024
Article
Join us in celebrating this year’s Judging Panele Award winners!
19 August 2024
Article
Join us in celebrating this year’s Community Choice Award winners!
15 August 2024
Article
Vote for your favorite submissions that best demonstrate conservation impact, novel innovation/discovery, and strong storytelling of the work and the sector.
12 August 2024
Article
July 2024 OSS paper round-up
Amanda Matthes
In this instalment: ExMove for handling animal tracking data, HawkEar for spying on animals using cameras on birds, Pytorch-wildlife for species recognition and more!
11 August 2024
Article
Open Source Solutions Announcement: Introducing New OSS Group Leaders
Brianna Johns and 2 more
We are thrilled to welcome our 3 new Group Leaders for the 2024-2025 term, Bri Johns, Amanda Matthes, and Pen-Yuan Hsing!
8 August 2024
Careers
We are recruiting an (extendable) 2-year postdoc in my group to develop new technologies (cameras, microphones, deep learning, etc) to track earthworm activity in the field.
16 July 2024
Link
Keele University - KTP position
Claire Painton
Hi everyone - I wanted to share a fantastic opportunity at Keele University for a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) position with Arribada Initiative: to be responsible for developing and writing embedded software to...
8 July 2024
August 2025
event
Louisa Richmond-Coggan
September 2025
event
Louisa Richmond-Coggan
event
Louisa Richmond-Coggan
October 2025
event
Lacey Hughey and 3 more
April 2024
event
Wildlife Drones
March 2024
| Description | Activity | Replies | Groups | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hi skatewing, I'm not a domain expert like most people in this forum, but I have created XML schemas using object oriented (OO) principles in the past; the same capability... |
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Open Source Solutions | 4 years 5 months ago | |
| Hi Akiba No worries, thanks for responding! I'd love to delve into more detail on this once the new series has started and I have an idea of the tools and kit required!... |
|
Open Source Solutions, Sensors | 4 years 11 months ago | |
| Hi Maxine, There are pros and cons to switching regulators and linear regulators. Linear regulators "throw away" the excess voltage in order to maintain a... |
|
Open Source Solutions, Sensors | 4 years 11 months ago | |
| Hi Luci. Did you ever get a response on this? I'd be interested in collaborating and helping develop out the system. We can probably assist in the manufacturing and... |
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Open Source Solutions | 5 years ago | |
| Hello, Ours is the SensorStation: https://github.com/cellular-tracking-technologies/SensorStation/ It is a multi-channel radio receiver based on Raspberry Pi for a variety... |
+4
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Open Source Solutions | 5 years 11 months ago | |
| Hi Marysia, Naturebytes is a good start, there are a number of projects running using their Raspberry Pi wildlife camera traps. Kind regards, Alasdair |
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Open Source Solutions | 6 years 2 months ago | |
| Daaaamn! That's a great list. Akiba |
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Open Source Solutions | 6 years 3 months ago | |
| Excellent Akiba, Thank you for your detailed thoughts and for sharing your experiences. |
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Open Source Solutions | 6 years 4 months ago | |
| Hi jlahoz. In reply to your questions: "I find commercial open source conservation technology to be a very exciting space, plenty of challenges but also opportunities.... |
+2
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Open Source Solutions | 6 years 4 months ago | |
| Hi everyone. This project is the first one that came out of this thread. @Rob+Appleby and I were discussing his WildSpy timer... |
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Open Source Solutions | 6 years 4 months ago | |
| Field Instruments: Build it yourself From custom wildlife collars to underwater recorders, a... |
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Open Source Solutions | 8 years 2 months ago |
Panthera: Monitoring Wildlife with Open-Source Data Management Tools
11 May 2023 5:52pm
Call for survey participants (AI/ML practitioners)
19 April 2023 3:17pm
Global shortage of Raspberry Pis - What are the alternatives
3 November 2022 10:27am
29 March 2023 10:13am
UPDATE: The Banana Pi didnt work out for us as it was not possible to track back all the components and ensure that they were responsibly sourced. The Rock board did work for us and we were able to port our system onto this. We will be rolling out units using this over the summer. It also looks like Raspberry Pis are coming back on line and we were able to secure a bulk order for deliver mid-summer
29 March 2023 10:14am
Yes, but for our needs that are not powerful enough
$500 micro grants for open science events
10 March 2023 1:19pm
USD 500 microgrants available for workshops, short courses - #8 by ShamsJaber - General - GOSH Community Forum
Up to 20 microgrants of USD 500 are available to organisations to run STEM workshops or short courses, to be held by May 31 2023. Applications are accepted now until Saturday March 25. The goal of the workshops or shor…
Proposals wanted for Innovation in Practice
6 March 2023 10:34pm
Moveapps: EMAC23 Coding Challenge
3 March 2023 7:58am
3 March 2023 3:12pm
Super initiative! I hope you get a lot of entries to this coding challenge!
6 March 2023 7:53am
Thanks Lars! Look forward to any entries from you and your colleagues. If you have an questions or suggestions, let me know.
6 March 2023 1:11pm
Hi Andrea! Although I am a keen user and observer of the Moveapps initiative, my R or Python coding skills are next to non- existing. I am therefore not likely to be contributing this time... Some day perhaps ;)
USD500 available for your workshop
6 March 2023 1:30pm
Moveapps EMAC23 Coding Challenge – Participate now!
3 March 2023 7:45am
The Arbimon newsletter is back!
23 February 2023 11:34pm
Deep Sea BRUVS Development
28 January 2023 1:41am
11 February 2023 3:07am
Hi Titus,
If the usual syntactic foam sources aren't available, an option may be to add an empty dry housing or use a larger housing for the BRUV, just to provide the buoyancy.
You can make your own syntactic foam from glass microballoons and epoxy resin, but this will require experimentation and testing. For sub-surface buoyancy, you could also use a jerry can full of cooking oil, or a coil of polypropylene rope.
Hiring Full Stack Developer at Conservation X Labs
10 February 2023 5:35pm
Software Engineer
16 January 2023 12:26pm
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
Otter video help!
5 September 2022 6:57pm
7 September 2022 6:12pm
Thank you for the response! I'm not sure how to find that out. It says MP4. Is that what you're looking for?
21 December 2022 7:46pm
Did you get any further with this Britnee?
26 December 2022 6:54pm
No, I was never able to figure out how to send these to anyone on here. I was hoping to learn how to clear these videos up if possible!
Join NASA’s harmful algal bloom ML challenge and win prizes!
15 December 2022 7:56pm
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
New: Satellites for Biodiversity Award
5 December 2022 2:08pm
MozFest 2023 call for proposals on Tech & Biodiversity
22 November 2022 11:10am
Picking up signal of GPS tag
10 November 2022 11:29am
16 November 2022 10:54am
Thanks Carly! I've been in awe of what Wildlife Drones is doing, but as you say my work at the moment is focussed on existing GPS units rather than telemetry for tracking. I'll still reach out & ask though. Thanks for your help! :)
16 November 2022 10:55am
Hi Kim! Thanks for sharing, this is really interesting! I'll check out the website & see what I can find out about the mechanics of the device. Thanks again!
21 November 2022 5:25pm
Hey Sol,
The only way for you to collect information from a GPS tag attached to a FAD is if that tag transmits that data to the drone. Unfortunately most receiver packages are a bit too large for hobbyist-style drones (from what I've seen).
Depending on the range/distance from shore, you might be able to have a shore-based receiver system?
Software to aid acoustic sound files visualization/labelling + Software to syncronize video/acoustic sonograms
23 September 2022 1:01pm
8 October 2022 12:44am
I would also recommend Arbimon. It is well set up to handle Audiomoth recordings. Being cloud based, you will need a good internet connection for sound file upload. I'm just starting to investigate its use for Song Scope recordings. Setting up the call recognisers will be a slow process, but they can be made available to all users once done.
8 October 2022 7:33am
You could try using a video editor like DaVinci for looking at your video and audio together. I don't think DaVinci displays sonograms by default (just waveform) but I think it will open your selected audio in an external editor which would allow you to see the sonograms and make measurements with something like Audacity or Kaleidoscope.
20 October 2022 11:01am
The open-source program Audacity can show the spectrograms and histograms and has quite a lot of other useful features, e.g. playing ultrasound calls slower, so it can be heard by people.
Open-source Argos satellite tag for bears - available now
7 October 2022 4:49pm
9 October 2022 5:14am
Oh, that looks so good, and some heavy hitting design firms too!
Conservation Tech Directory - new update!
29 August 2022 2:38pm
23 September 2022 5:26pm
Congrats on the milestone Carly and Gracie!
26 September 2022 10:07pm
Thanks so much!!
Ecological Forecasting Initiative's data analysis webinar series
26 September 2022 6:50pm
Crypto funding for ecosystem and conservation science
8 September 2022 1:48pm
How To Use An Arduino – Beginners Guide
1 September 2022 10:02pm
Arduino Tutorials for Absolute Beginners - Signal Basics (2022)
These Arduino tutorials show you how to program an Arduino for each signal. Learn what are AC current vs DC, and digital vs analog signals.
Conservation Technology Research Internship
26 August 2022 4:58pm
28 March 2023 9:37pm
Have you considered Arduinos?