[HN Gopher] Mothbox 4.0
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Mothbox 4.0
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 265 points
Date : 2024-10-15 14:10 UTC (1 days 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?
| hikinghack wrote:
| Yeah, i feel like currently they are at about the price of
| camera traps 10 years ago. There is very little mass-
| manufacturability to them right now (it's all open source and
| made from off-the-shelf parts) but later if we can find more
| funding, we are going to make a design more for manufacturing
| which should hopefully drive the costs down even more! :)
| fn-mote wrote:
| > There is very little mass-manufacturability to them right
| now (it's all open source and made from off-the-shelf
| parts)
|
| This is the obstruction to using them in an educational
| setting. If they were available for $600+ each but already
| completely built (minimal DIY), they would be more likely
| to get into (some) schools.
| max-ibel wrote:
| OTOH, it'd a fun science project just to built one, for
| maybe a different set of kids that operate the box.
|
| Just needs motivated teachers, if you ask me. I assume
| the mothbox is more of a high-school project, building
| one seems on that level as well.
| hikinghack wrote:
| We have a group of kids in Rhode Island building some
| with the library there! Part of a "Wildlives" program
| where the kids also learn to put camera traps around the
| local nature!
|
| Def just needs motivated teachers!
| hikinghack wrote:
| totally! Right now we are just trying to get them out and
| tested on science projects around the world, but
| hopefully we can find funding to make more designs that
| could be manufactured in bulk (like the audiomoth and
| groupgets) and have even more of these things out and
| about!
| 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?
| dekhn wrote:
| sorry, yes, I'm referring to birdnet.
| buescher wrote:
| I have a pi running birdnet-pi on my porch.
| https://www.birdweather.com/birdnetpi
| adolph wrote:
| Here is the related hardware widget. $200 with a $59/year
| service for alerts etc.
|
| https://haikubox.com/
| adolph wrote:
| Something of note that creators like that of Mothbox might
| find interesting (if they didn't already know), Haikubox
| was awarded about $1m from the NSF: SBIR Phase II: Building
| a Nature Monitoring Network for Birds [0]. More about the
| awarding NSF "directorate" here [1].
|
| 0. https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2135664
| &His...
|
| 1. https://new.nsf.gov/tip/latest
| hikinghack wrote:
| Oh thanks for sharing this!
| 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
| xipho wrote:
| If you want to manage your own data take a look at
| TaxonWorks. Multi-entry and bifurcating key editors, images,
| much more. It, and its companions are all open source, see
| TaxonPages for example.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> due to inevitable enshittification_
|
| PlantNet is led by an alphabet soup consortium of French
| research institutes like IRD, CIRAD, INRIA, and INRA so I
| don't think enshitification is inevitable - though I don't
| know why it's not open source. It's funded by grants and
| donations with no incentive to enshitify it for more revenue.
| r2oaa2f83jfpa3 wrote:
| Not counts, but you can upload the images to
| https://inaturalist.org. Most of the recent conservation
| research papers use iNaturalist data.
| 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.
| smallerfish wrote:
| No, but great idea. Once I get the current batch back from
| the repair shop I'll start doing that.
| hikinghack wrote:
| We use some dielectric grease when we have to make some
| outdoor connections and it works great here in the jungle,
| and it also has the bonus of keeping the leaf cutter ants
| from slicing up your electronics too!
| 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.
| hikinghack wrote:
| Hi! I'm andy! I'm the guy who spent the past year making the
| Mothbox! I don't know how this got on ycombinator, but cool! We
| are working here together Let me know if you have any questions!
|
| Some quick basics: It's an entirely open source system made from
| off-the-shelf parts made so you can build one yourself! We built
| it to help a set of community reforestation initiatives here in
| Panama! (
|
| Existing automated insect monitors we checked out wouldn't work
| for us because: 1) They were REALLY BIG (like huge heavy suitcase
| size+) 2) They were really EXPENSIVE (like 7000-15000$ !) 3)
| There wasn't any info to build robust ones that could withstand
| months in the rainforest!
|
| So we build one ourselves! We started with absolutely no budget,
| and the costs that people have noticed ($375) are really the
| cheapest you can find these parts (Pi5 + big battery + 64MP
| camera + really bright lights), and for instance are on par with
| the $200 just for the 16mp logitech webcam employed in many
| existing insect monitors!
|
| We got about 20 of these out in the wild here in Panama already,
| and are literally building more in the jungle as I'm typing this!
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Hey Andy, this looks awesome. Nice work!
|
| I think I'd like to get one to track insect diversity and
| populations in areas where I work on riparian restoration
| projects. My hope is that when projects are completed, in the
| following years it'll be evident in the insect data the Mothbox
| collects. Do you think that's a valid use case? Maybe I'd need
| more than one to get enough data?
| hikinghack wrote:
| Totally! We are using it for farmland and riparian
| restoration projects here in Panama. Everything is still very
| nascent, so we don't really have a good idea what amount of
| mothboxes would constitute "enough data," but the interesting
| thing about insects vs like mammal camera traps is that like
| even if two mothboxes are just 200 m apart, you can really
| see a lot of insect variation!
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| This is really interesting. That means I can collect data
| in places we've worked as well as places we haven't, which
| should help with understanding what's improving and what's
| not. Hopefully the restoration sites will show improvements
| in some way or another over time. I'm excited to test this
| out. Thank you!
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Here is how you got on ycombinator:
|
| 1. I happened on your website in Clive Thompson's newsletter,
| among the websites in his final "sudden death" round:
|
| https://buttondown.com/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-25-the...
|
| 2. I thought HN peeps would find it of interest so I submitted
| it
| hikinghack wrote:
| Awesome! Thanks for sharing it around!!
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Thanks for sharing -- and even more, for the Clive Thompson
| link. :)
| mason_mpls wrote:
| thank you for your service
| hikinghack wrote:
| Thanks! Always happy to serve the commons of science!
| sinuhe69 wrote:
| I skimmed through the user manual and find the design is really
| cool. It is well thought for the field use and obviously the
| optimized result of many iterations. Although I'm no
| naturalist, I find inspiration in your design. Kudos to the
| good work!
| hikinghack wrote:
| Really appreciate the kind words!
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