Data loggers and triggers

Weather stations; Eco-watch can link weather stations into your project. The data captured provides a general, holistic view of an environment and provides information about the fundamental conditions affecting wildlife activity and behaviour. Weather stations can be simple or complex depending on your project's objectives. Generally we install systems that measure wind speed, air temperature, humidity, rainfall, ambient light level and incident UV, which is enough to create a solid picture of most habitats.

Monitoring micro-habitats; although affected by the weather, wildlife tends to spend most of its time in micro-habitats, some of which it creates itself, for example badgers build communal setts for protection against other wildlife and warmth. The conditions in these micro-habitats is often more important to behaviour and activity than what is happening in the outside world. So to measure conditions in these places Eco-watch provides systems that can accept any number and type of probe; the choice is limited only by your imagination. Some examples of the sorts of environmental parameters logged in projects we have implemented include; temperature, humidity, light level and air flow inside and outside underground chambers, nest boxes and within micro-habitats. Soil and water temperature, air and water flow at varying depths can also dictate the behaviour of certain wildlife. Eco-watch use robust and rugged probes and loggers that can withstand exposure to extreme environments for an extended time.

Motion and audible triggers; most of the systems that Eco-watch implements capture video and audio from cameras and microphones when motion is detected e.g. an animal moves in view of the camera and recording is triggered to a hard disk drive or tape. For high quality recording we have a specially designed system called the iCube™. Sometimes, however, mechanical and digital triggers (not directly related to the camera system itself) can be more appropriate and cost effective. Eco-watch provides triggers that are activated by pressure pads, passive infrared, audible activity and infrared break beams. These can be very useful for monitoring tracks, trails and the entrances to chambers e.g. nest boxes. Like any other probe, these triggers are connected and processed by a data logger.

Integrated video and data capture; so where does the data that you have captured go and what do you do with it? Eco-watch specialises in integrating video and data to give you a holistic view of wildlife activity within the environment in which it lives. Data loggers collect information from the probes, be it from weather stations, micro-habitats or triggers. Communication from the data loggers is via IP network and the data they collect can be viewed real-time locally on a computer or touch screen via an intranet or the Internet. Eco-watch can then help you link this to a database enabling video and data to be synchronised. You can query this database and, for example, ask questions such as, "What was the activity from specific cameras when the temperature was below freezing?". We have developed a unique archiving and presentation system, the iCube™, to do this task.