Hi everybody!
I’m sharing regular Mothbox updates while working with the Digital Naturalism Laboratories (Dinalab) team in Panama. For those curious, you can read the previous Mothbox updates here. In today’s post, I’ll be talking about the Mothboxes we deployed at the 4th Digital Naturalism Conference in Bali, Indonesia, and some updates on our new mass-manufacturable version of the Mothbox.
Mothboxes in Southeast Asia
Throughout June and July, @hikinghack and @briannajohns spent time hacking and deploying Mothboxes with Sea Communities, a community-based organisation in Les Village, Bali. They’re focused on creating a sustainable revenue stream for the local community through community-based conservation projects, such as their coral reef restoration program. Sea Communities was the local host partner for this year’s Digital Naturalism Conference (Dinacon), where nearly 120 participants gathered in Les for almost a month to create electronics, art, and other physical and digital artifacts to be shared with one another and with Sea Communities. The Digital Naturalism Conferences are a convening of field biologists, interaction designers, engineers, artists, and anyone interested in exploring new ways of interacting with nature. You can learn more about the Conferences here!
While at the conference, Andy and Bri continued their work with the Mothbox project. Andy took advantage of the opportunity to work in person with engineers and hackers who were happy to help provide feedback on our latest Mothbox PCB design. One participant, Paul Hamilton, got so into the Mothbox KiCad work that he made a whole new iteration of the PCB he’s testing out for us in Australia right now! Meanwhile, Bri worked with the Sea Communities team to deploy Mothboxes around Les and collect data.
Our first test run with the new PCBs for version 5 of the Mothbox
Bri deploying Mothboxes with Dinacon participants and Sea Communities team members.
We even managed to sell a Mothbox to one Dinacon participant (@arky ) who will be deploying them in Cambodia, marking a new country to add to our list! We also donated some Mothboxes to Sea Communities after training their local crews, who will be working together with local universities to deploy them over the next few months.
New: Mothbox Issues on Github
Mothboxes are now being built and deployed all over the globe! Our email inboxes have been flooded recently with messages from folks who are using them, which is exciting to see. However, this also means that there are more bugs to fix, especially regarding our data post-processing pipeline. In order to make the troubleshooting process easier, we’ve set up Issues section in our GitHub project. Anyone who needs help with a software or hardware issue can open an issue on GitHub, and someone from our team can help fix it!
Screenshot of the Issues page on the Mothbox GitHub
Join our Working Group with the Open Science Shop
We’re teaming up with the Open Science Shop to create a network of manufacturers and vendors eager to build and sell Mothboxes locally! We will be hosting monthly meetings with various makers, vendors, and open hardware enthusiasts interested in establishing a distributed manufacturing network of Mothboxes. If you are interested in joining our Working Group, please register here.
Upcoming Events
We are invited to an upcoming symposium on automated insect monitoring at Aarhus University in Denmark. The Automated Monitoring of Insects (AMI) symposium will take place from September 24-26, and @hikinghack will be representing the Mothbox project there. We’re also heading to the Entomology 2025 annual meeting in Portland, Oregon, from November 9-12.