Updated bird monitor app fixes upload problem

Our old bird monitors have recently stopped uploading recordings. These bird monitors typically use old Android phones which stopped recognising the website security certificates that we use. This meant they weren't able to communicate with our servers.

First of all I would like to apologise for this happening and the amount of time it took for us to fix it. The good news is we have a fix and I'd like to take you through the steps to install this on your bird monitor.

If you'd prefer to not do this yourself you can send your phones to us and we'll do this for you.

Save your existing recordings

You need to do this step first because when you re-install the app it will delete your old recordings (I found this out the hard way). To do this you need to copy the recordings that have been stored on your phone to a computer. These are stored this directory:
Android\data\nz.org.cacophony.birdmonitor\files\Bird Monitor\recordings

Now select the group that your bird monitor belongs to from this page:

https://browse.cacophony.org.nz/groups and select the manual uploads tab.

Now select the recordings you have copied to your computer and drag them to the box where it says select audio recordings.

Select the bird monitor that made the recordings and then press the upload button. Note the upload button is at the bottom of the page. If you have lots of recordings you may have to scroll a long way. The recordings will then begin to upload.

Now you can install the new bird monitor app with the fix to the upload problem.

Installing the new bird monitor app

The easiest way to do this is to go to the Google Play store on your phone, sign in, search for Cacophony bird monitor then download and install the app. Note: you may need to uninstall the old Bird Monitor App to get this working.

After you have successfully installed the new version of the app, we recommend logging out of the Google Paly store to reduce power usage on your Bird Monitor. 

Once successfully installed you will need to log in, using your Cacophony user name and password, give your device a new name (unfortunately you can't use your old name). I recommend using a name that includes the serial number on the back of your phone. Update the location and take a test recording. You can confirm that this uploads properly.

Then your bird monitor is all set to go.

Sideloading

If you are comfortable sideloading an Android App then you can download the app directly from here and install it on your phone. Some of the phones we tested either didn't have the Playstore, or it was difficult to log on. For these phones it was necessary to sideload the app.

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