Robust, real-time and autonomous monitoring of ecosystems with an open, low-cost, networked device

Automated methods of monitoring ecosystems provide a cost-effective way to track changes in natural system’s dynamics across temporal and spatial scales. However, methods of recording and storing data captured from the field still require significant manual effort. Here we introduce an open source, inexpensive, fully autonomous ecosystem monitoring unit for capturing and remotely transmitting continuous data streams from field sites over long time-periods. We provide a modular software framework for deploying various sensors, together with implementations to demonstrate proof of concept for continuous audio monitoring and time-lapse photography. We show how our system can outperform comparable technologies for fractions of the cost, provided a local mobile network link is available. The system is robust to unreliable network signals and has been shown to function in extreme environmental conditions, such as in the tropical rainforests of Sabah, Borneo. We provide full details on how to assemble the hardware, and the open-source software. Paired with appropriate automated analysis techniques, this system could provide spatially dense, near real-time, continuous insights into ecosystem and biodiversity dynamics at a low cost.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  bioRxiv

• Publication date

  2017-12-18

• Fields of study

  Biology, Computer Science, Engineering, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1101/236075
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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