[HN Gopher] Mothbox 4.0
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Mothbox 4.0
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 154 points
Date : 2024-10-15 14:10 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (digital-naturalism-laboratories.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (digital-naturalism-laboratories.github.io)
| morninglight wrote:
| This could be a great teaching tool, BUT at about $375 per
| Mothbox, it's going to be a hard sell for most schools.
| hansihe wrote:
| $375 per box doesn't seem bad to me at all when you probably
| only need a couple per school?
| yapyap wrote:
| I don't think it'll be a hard sell for schools at that price,
| school budgets tend to be fairly elastic for new things (and
| sometimes for wholly unnecessary things, for the price of less
| than 1/4th of new MacBook for the principal (for example) they
| could have this.
|
| Edit: also if schools were to be interested in this (which they
| should be, it's very neat) they could group together and buy in
| bulk which would also greatly reduce the price
| nerdponx wrote:
| Are there any "citizen science" initiatives where I can buy a
| device like this and upload my insect counts to some database
| that's useful for researchers?
|
| I have been interested in setting up some things like home
| weather monitoring, ADS-B, streaming webcams for wildlife, etc.
| anyway so this would be a fun item to add to that.
| gibspaulding wrote:
| Cornell is doing something along those lines for birds using
| audio recordings. It's just a smartphone app though -
| https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/sound-id/
| beardyw wrote:
| I was using it today, and any day when there are birds
| around. It correctly identifies birds you can barely hear.
| It's become as useful as binoculars to me. A great free app.
| dekhn wrote:
| they also release the model. I've recorded hours of audio
| outside my house and run it through the model on my desktop
| with GPU.
| abroadwin wrote:
| Are they using birdnet or something else?
| buescher wrote:
| I have a pi running birdnet-pi on my porch.
| https://www.birdweather.com/birdnetpi
| aeturnum wrote:
| I think the air gradient folks do some collaboration and it's
| possible you could get your sensors linked into a bigger net by
| contacting them: https://www.airgradient.com/research/
|
| Edit: Also MIT did this recently:
| https://news.mit.edu/2023/low-cost-device-can-measure-air-po...
| Modified3019 wrote:
| On a related note, I wish there was some sort of software
| system where I could ID weeds and insects with photos and
| locations at various levels of confidence ("possibly",
| "probably", keyed out, genetic testing) at different taxonomic
| levels and both self host my results while also automatically
| contributing to a larger project.
|
| There are various projects out there (like plantnet) but I
| don't want to burn massive personal effort curating in a system
| that isn't my own first and foremost, due to inevitable
| enshittification. At the same time, I want others to benefit
| from what I do, in particular local growers and naturalists.
| Things like PlantNet also tend to be "majority vote" on ID,
| meaning a whole lot is often close, but wrong. For example
| there is a regional plant specific to my area called Willamette
| Navarretia. Those that don't realize this will easily confuse
| it with very similar looking species found most elsewhere in
| the western US, and last I checked it wasn't in PlantNet.
|
| https://www.oregon.gov/oda/programs/PlantConservation/SiteAs...
|
| https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/165663-Navarretia-willamett...
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Have you tried iNaturalist? [0]
|
| Insects, animals, plants, etc get posted from all over the
| world for ID.
|
| [0] https://www.inaturalist.org/
|
| I post lots of photos of things I find locally and experts
| step in and help ID the subjects when I don't know what I'm
| seeing.
|
| I also have a couple of AudioMoths for recording local sounds
| including birds, insects, etc. Very high quality units at a
| reasonable price.
|
| I have seen this Mothbox posted a couple of times and almost
| bought one since I know I have tons of moths attracted to my
| native plants out here, but the price is a sticking point
| right now. I think something like this combined with an
| AudioMoth and some trail cams would be a good local wildlife
| monitor setup.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| _edit_ so it turns out, at least a significant part of
| inaturalist is in fact open source of some kind. I never
| realized, I'll have to look into this more. I appreciate
| you getting me to take a second look
| https://github.com/inaturalist
|
| This may be exactly what I need:
| https://www.inaturalist.org/sites/network
| smallerfish wrote:
| BioClip (referenced in their writeup) is good to know about.
|
| I run a small scale wildlife monitoring program with usually 3
| cameras (depending on how many are being repaired for battery
| terminal corrosion). Each month I skim through and categorize
| ~200 videos that we've captured. Doesn't take too long, but it
| would be nice to automate at some point.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| Do you use any kind of protectant, like dielectric grease or
| Deoxit? I find applying to both the equipment and battery
| contacts saves a lot of headaches on my work phone, ATV,
| trailer lights connectors and anything else powered I use in
| the field.
| Choco31415 wrote:
| BioCLIP won the CVPR best student paper award:
| https://cvpr.thecvf.com/Conferences/2024/News/Awards
|
| Having talked with Sam, they're working on BioCLIPv2. So expect
| even better results sometime soon.
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(page generated 2024-10-15 23:00 UTC)