2040 Newsletter

Manufacturing partner for The Cacophony Project

Kia ora,

This month we have made great progress with the DOC AI Cam. It now can run the AI on the camera and has new audio settings. We're testing a low light solar panel and ramping up manufacturing.

We've had another slow month on our trap development, while we test our new design, break things and wait on new parts. We're expecting more to report next month.

We've been busy with conferences, attending the Canterbury Branch of the NZ Biosecurity Institute METs day and the Predator Free 2050 hui last week. It was fantastic to see all the mahi that is happening across the country, both with the landscape projects as well as with the science and strategy.

Next week we are attending the Predator Free Waitaha Regional Hui and I will be presenting at the Regional Councils' Terrestrial Ecology Forum in May. Please let us know if you're interested in having someone talk at your group about what we're up to at the Cacophony Project.

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

DOC AI Cam

Running AI on the DOC AI Cam

The main change we've made this month to the DOC AI Cam is we have added the ability to run the AI on the camera. This means the camera can now identify the animals in its view in near real-time.

For now, this is mainly of interest to our partners that are either:

• looking to use the camera to control a trap to avoid trapping non-target species, or
• to send a notification of what animals have been seen when there is no mobile coverage, using a low bandwidth network such as Celium.

We plan to start testing these integrations over the coming months.

The Cacophony Project have been testing the DOC AI Cam with the High Interaction Rate Trap. They published the intriguing results of their testing on the Cacophony Blog.

Additional Audio controls

Coupled with this release are some more audio controls. This includes the ability to do 5 minute recordings, and to synchronise audio recordings across DOC AI Cams.

Read more details about the AI on the camera and these audio controls here. Note: this release will be going out shortly.

Testing solar

We have begun testing a low light solar solution for the DOC AI Cam. The Summit Road Society in Christchurch are testing this for us. This is still using recycled battery cells from Lime Scooter Batteries which will keep the cost low. (Many thanks to Lime Scooters for their support) We can't send second hand batteries outside of New Zealand but those customers will be able to buy their own cells to use with this.

This is designed to work with a variety of solar panel sizes, that will depend on the available light and power requirements. We are currently designing it to have up to 12 cells, but we don't expect it will need that many for normal, low power operation.

This has potential to significantly reduce the labour associated with swapping and charging batteries and it will be lighter than the existing batteries (3.6kg). It may also be cheaper.

We are still working on the circuitry, housing and mounting options and are hoping to have something available for sale in the coming months.

Battery reporting bug

Unfortunately in our last software update we introduced a bug to the software that reads the battery voltage. It will now report either 17% or 100%. We apologise for any confusion this has caused and will fix this in the next update.

Manufacturing update

We are working through a backlog of orders, following our best month of sales ever. There's currently a 2-3 week wait for new cameras. We have recently made a mould for our cases which will result in a slightly better case and some cost savings. These cost savings balance cost increases from inflation and a weak NZ dollar.

Our test solar set up. Next month we will share a photo of it somewhere more wild than an office.