AudioMoth Configuration App 1.3.0 & Firmware 1.4.0

I'm wondering too if I could change the 32 kb segment size into longer? This to avoid silent gaps between consecutive signals of the same individual (of noctule for instance). Any chance I can change by myself the test different solutions?

Quick question: The release notes say "Improved low-voltage cut-off for use with rechargeable batteries."

What has changed? Is it a decrease in the cuttoff voltage threshold? If so whats the new voltage level?

For reference I had been using rechargeables and found I could get continual nighttime recording for 3.7 nights. I'm testing currently to see what difference the Amplitude Threshold and other changes make.

Hi Matthew, These would be quite easy to do in custom versions of the firmware. We've also done versions that calculate the sunrise and sunset times from locations and time. So far we've always tried to maintain backwards compatibility so that every version of the configuration app can configure every version of the firmware (although you won't always get the more advanced features), but at some point we'll likely drop that constraint which will give us much more flexibility for additions such as you describe. Having different settings for each recording period is another popular request which we've done in custom firmware but really need to break compatibility to support properly in the configuration app. Alex

Thanks Peter, Alex and co for the wonderful update to the firmware and configuration software. I have a request for consideration in future versions of the configuration App. I hope this may not require variation to the firmware. The delayed scheduled start and stop (First/Last recording date) function is already useful in giving us three levels of scheduling. I would find it even more useful if I could apply more start and stop dates. I am working with the µMoth for a long term on-animal deployment where ideally the µMoth will not be in contact with a user until final retrieval. A limit on battery size means I cannot record continuously and I'll have to have extended off periods if it is to make it through more than one season of sampling.

The interface for this could be done by changing the first/last portion of the schedule tab to become a scrolling list where the user could add as many first and last lines as required.

Alternatively this could be combined with the "Add recording period" section so that the list of recording periods is a combined Active days (dd/mm/yyyy to dd/mm/yyyy for hh:mm to hh:mm) and repeated for each successive date period. That way it would also be useful for those trying to track sunset or sunrise times through autumn or spring as they could just make a continuous stream of one week periods where the start and stop times are progressively incremented appropriate for the location. (I'm assuming there is no plan to incorporate an almanac into the firmware).

Any ideas on how hard that would be?

I think Sandor is referring to the amplitude threshold recording in the Advanced settings. But you probably already worked this out.

"trigger function!"

Which trigger function?

Hey,

thanks a lot for the trigger function! It is awesome! :)

For me, it would be really useful to increase the length of the sampled segments! Is there a solution to keep not only 32KB segments, but longer ones, for example 10 times longer? Both for bat and bird recordings, I'm also interested in the faint parts of sequence, and I don't wanna lose them!

Thanks for your help!

cheers,

Sandor

Hi Francisco, It will work in the end. Try restarting the Flash App after trying to power up in bootloader mode. Make sure the paper clip is making a good contact. Some are varnished and aren't conductive. It won't work if you have the batteries installed. Alex

Hi. One of my Audiomoths failed to update the firmware and now is "dead". I've tried to put it directly to flashing mode as suggested, but nothing happens. The same USB cable was used after this to update other devices and it worked. Are there other options to resurrect my device? Thank you!

If you open the built-in powershell application you can run: >Format-Hex -Count 488 [filename] to see header data.

I've read over the White Paper for the temperature measurements. I using a computer with Windows 10 OS and I cannot seem to locate the file header comment that displays the temperature. I would really like some advice on how to locate this. I saw the Python code and will look into that but was wondering if there was anyway to view it directly on my computer. I tried checking the file properties but it does not show a file comment. I tried using an online tool which was able to extract the information but my files are large and that process would be inefficient to use. I know this is likely a dumb question.

Latest config app v1.3 with firmware 1.4.0 - when saving a config file it does not save the advanced setting, the record settings and the schedule are OK

Hi Xavier, This is a linker issue. If you open up the project build settings, go to the linker ordering page, and make sure that '-lm' is below '/src/digitalFilter.o' in the list. Do a clean build and that should fix it. Alex

Hi all the team,

first of all congratulations for the great new developments, they are very welcome and your time and dedication much appreciated. They will certainly make a difference in bat research.

We've been customising the firmware in the previous versions and Simplicity Studio has been working smoothly so far. I've just imported the latest project version with the main.c & digitalFilter files but I cannot build the binaries (unmodified version, just for setting up and testing so far) because there are some seemingly undefined references in the 'digitalFilter.c', which actually seem to be functions from the math.h library, which is invoked at the beginning of the code. I list them hereafter:

• tanf()

• hypotf()

• sqrtf()

• csqrt()

• cosf() / sinf()

Any idea of what can be happening? Is there any extra driver/library that needs to be installed to work on this versions? main.c also makes use of 'math.h' without issues.

Many thanks in advance!

Best,

Xavier

Alex, Peter, and team.

Thanks for what looks to be a set of very useful improvements.

I'll run some field tests giving back-back comparisons between the 1.3, 1.4 and triggered firmware versions and post the results here. Unfortunately the wet weather last night prevented any attempts at bat recordings.

A couple of questions and inevitable feature requests.

1) What is the roll-on /roll-off of the new filters? Looking at figure 5 in the white paper the filter looks to be quite slow with gain = 0.2@24kHz and 0.8@72kHz, so sensitivity of the detector will vary with frequency through most of the range of interest for bat recordings.

2) Would I be right in thinking at that if the LFP were set at half the sample rate then aliased signals would be removed (or at least significantly attenuated)?

I very much appreciate the Amplitude Threshold Recording and can see this being very useful.

A few feature requests if I may:

a) As more and more parameters of the AudioMoth become configurable it becomes increasingly important to be able to audit the configurations actually used in the field. Please consider adding functionality so that on start-up (switch moved to "Custom") the AudioMoth writes out the current configuration to a txt file on the SD card. Alternatively add the configuration information to the INFO chunk in the WAV header.

b) Can the file expansion functionality be broken out from the main configuration app, preferably into a stand-alone program that can be scripted into batch files on Windows or Linux shell scripts?

c) Can the file expansion functionality be extended to generate a new file of max duration X seconds at the start of each chunk? This would be very useful when working with classifiers such as TadaridiaL which have an input file size limitation.

As these last two features are probably edge cases from your perspective so if I wanted to look into this myself should I start with "decompress.js" and the "Expansions" folders on GitHub?

Finally, any news on the "AudioMoth Labs" site that was talked about last year?

Again, many thanks for all your hard work.

EAP

Hi Francisco, We'll be posting a white paper on the temperature measurements later today. The temperature sensor is inside the processor so will be close to ambient. It is probably +/- 3C in the worth case uncalibrated but can be calibrated to + / - 1C. It is in all hardware versions of AudioMoth. We just haven't used it in previous versions of the firmware. Alex

Hi! I want to know what is the temperature measurement for. Is it for the device itself? or is it for the ambient tº? I also need to know if this feature is available for the new version of the hardware or it could be activated from v. 1.0.0. Thank you!

There a write-up on the filters and the threshold recording here - https://github.com/OpenAcousticDevices/White-Papers/blob/master/Using_AudioMoth_with_Filtering_and_Amplitude_Threshold_Recording.pdf

Peter - those look like an awesome set of updates, just having a look at trying some of them out now. Can you direct me to some guidance on the amplitude threshold recording function and how this works/what it does?

Many thanks

Brian.

When downloading the flash and time app they just get stuck (see photo) and I cannot open them. Any ideas why, please? I can open the configuration app just not any of the apps (desktop PC using Win 10)