2040 Newsletter

Manufacturing partner for The Cacophony Project

Kia ora and welcome to our May newsletter.

This month we're sharing more updates on the DOC AI Cam with a reminder to secure your camera. We have more details on our low light solar design and are making progress with the High Interaction Rate Trap.

In the theme of highlighting other innovations in this space, check out:

• this smart gate from Australia
• The latest version of the DOC acoustic recorder, the AR5, made by Alato

Next month I'll be attending Fieldays. I'll be hanging out with NZAutoTraps who are also innovating. I believe they will have two stands in the innovation tent.

After Fieldays I'm presenting to Predator Free Hauraki Coromandel Community Trust in Whitianga on June 14 and Thames on June 15, and at the Upper Hutt branch of Forest and Bird on June 24th.

I'd like to shout out to the team at Predator Free 2050 who found out last week that their company is being disestablished. Everyone I have interacted with there has been extremely passionate and competent. They have achieved so much. I'd like to think that the community that has been led by them can continue their good work. Aroha nui to everyone there.

Last week they shared a video of Lincoln and me discussing the Cacophony Project products. Check it out below. This is part of a series of videos describing products they have supported.

Kā mihi nui,
Shaun Ryan
2040 Limited, manufacturing partner for The Cacophony Project.

Lincoln and I discussing the Cacophony Project product

DOC AI Cam

In the news

Our last newsletter prompted an in-depth story about the success of the Pest Free Banks Peninsula in removing possums.

Software updates

This month we released lots of software improvements:

• Improved bird classification with help from eBird which means we will only recommend birds that are expected to be found in your area.
• Overlay photos on by default (this is one of our coolest features)
• Stopped emails now work in audio only mode
• Tracking improvements for thermal videos
• Mobile UI improvements,
• Controls to change the size of an audio track
• On Sidekick we added password remembering and reset, a 5 min audio recording button and upload notifications.

See all the details here.

Upcoming software releases

We’ve been hunting down a bug that has been causing some modem problems and have a possible solution that we will test shortly. We’re also making it so the camera behaves well when the SD card fills up.

We are currently working on further improvements to the Cacophony Sidekick app. This will include integration with the chatbot, better handling when you aren’t a member of the group that the cameras are in, improved performance on small screens and more bug fixes.

We’ve working on improving our bird recognition, specifically using the DOC data that we recently acquired.

We are also working on improvements to long term monitoring reports, making them easier and quicker to generate.

Manufacturing update

We still have a small backlog of cameras to manufacture. This week we’re expecting delivery of 500 new cases made using a mould. This will set us up well to increase our production.

Our solar solution

We are still testing our latest low light solar design. The solution we’re looking at now will charge in both low and high light situations. We’ve documented what we’re trying to achieve here: an open source, flexible, and low cost solar battery pack.

At this stage we’re still not sure when this will be ready to sell.

 

A comparison of two circuit designs in high and low light

Secure your camera

This month we had our first camera reported stolen. Just a reminder that the camera bracket contains a loop that you can secure a padlock and chain to. It isn’t perfect, but it should reduce the chances of a camera being stolen.

High Interaction Rate Trap

This month we have been doing lifecycle testing for our new trap design. We had it fail during the testing, made a small change and have completed over 3000 cycles. We still have more testing to do and would like to get to over 10000 cycles before we start field testing.

Once this is available we will offer upgrades to our existing trap customers. This controller includes the ability to connect a DOC AI Cam and use the machine vision to control when the trap is active.