We have been super busy deploying another dozen mothboxes around panama while also adding cool new features! So i have a backlog of updates to post about!
So here’s a bunch of cool tweaks and updates we made:
The Mothbox can support 4 different types of targets now!
-Standard Target (about A4 size, can capture moths less than 1mm)
-Dual target
-Quad target
-Just sit it in front of a white wall/sheet
The Runtime is DOUBLED
This is some of the biggest news. We include a cheap 12V regulator (like $10) in the design now because we realized that a lot of L-ion batteries that say they are 12V actually spend 80% of their lifespan around 11V. Which means some things like our UV lights start dimming. But by adding this $10 bit we get some amazing features like:
- The lights stay on for 4 days instead of 2! (about 21 hours of constant run time)
- The lights have a uniform illumination throughout their life (no dimming on last day)
- wiring the ring lights is wayyy easier because you can chop their regulator off!
We have a full post-processing AI+Human workflow!
Thanks the Beetlepalooza, we teamed up with some awesome folks to make some scripts for pyBioCLIP that let us analyze our moths super quickly to a specific taxon+physical region. Then we are able to visualize this data in a fiftyone UI that lets humans correct and sort or add labels, to then analyze it deeper taxonomically! it rules
Check it out
We also did a bunch of lens tests for the mothbox, like adding a wide-angle lens. Didn’t really like it.
Too distorted on the edges
There is a unified scheduling script for pi4 pi5
The github now has a single “Scheduler.py” script that can work for a Pi4 (with pijuice) or Pi5!
We use internal UV lights now
We share how to make a internal UV light so everything is nice and tidy and protected in the field, along with more elegant designs for connected any external UV light too!
The Documentation is much cleaner in general
There’s even an instructable!
** @leeborg got brought in to help clean up all our Pi python scripts so they are much more human readable and organized!**