The Cacophony Project is all about the eradication of invasive predators from New Zealand. However, there's a wee thing called COVID-19 that has brought about a few problems in human society (you may have seen the odd thing about it in the news recently). At Cacophony, we love being useful so when the call came requesting that we turn our attention to how our cameras might be used, we listened and responded with our favourite type of action - we started building things. Today, we talk to our founder about how that happened and what we're doing to try to help New Zealand get through this and return to something like normal.
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Cacophony Blog
24 Mar 2020 - 16:02
In this entry we are very pleased to welcome back Tim Hunt from the Centre for Information Technology at Wintec. He has an update for us on his work in automatically detecting Morepork (Ruru) from audio recordings made by our bird monitors.
16 Mar 2020 - 22:47
The Eastern Bays Songbird project has been going for 2 years and the members were keen to see how they were getting on with their goal of predator eradication. They have been using a 2040 Thermal Camera developed by The Cacophony Project to see what is going on around their traps. Their overall impression before deploying the camera was that they were getting the predator numbers down. They hoped the Thermal Camera would be a great way to get a full picture of the predators in the area. This camera was developed because standard trail cameras are designed for pig and deer and miss lots of the small moving mammals we are interested in here. In this entry, we share their findings.
13 Mar 2020 - 14:35
Our previous blog post showed a simple model to allow you to work out trap interaction rates. The goal of this post is to show that this same simple model can also be used to explain the effectiveness of aerial poison drops. We are not making any comments about the value of poison drops as a tool but just showing how a simple model works for different elimination methods. We like the fact that a fairly simple tool can help explain the relative merits of different elimination methods. The real value starts to appear when we tweak some of the other parameters in the model - we think it gives us a clear idea about useful ways to improve predator elimination.
6 Mar 2020 - 12:18
Over the last three years we have had various versions of our thermal cameras in front of all the main types of traps. What we have found is that a large number of predators seem to just walk on past irrespective of what type of lures and set ups we use. We have detailed videos of rats and possums running all around traps but not always interacting with them. Typical reaction to this is that we must be doing something wrong but after watching tens of thousands of videos we suspect this is more of an issue than just us being hopeless trappers.
Today we introduce a model we have developed to allow you to calculate the interaction rate of your traps. Given inputs such as interaction rate, elimination rate, number of devices, and predator population the model creates a graph showing the likely impact on the population. We think the results are not only intriguing but telling. They suggest it might be time for all of us to adjust our view of the importance of some of the factors involved.
26 Feb 2020 - 13:54
Self-resetting (automatic) traps have been on the market for a while now. Speaking to trappers far and wide (as we have a habit of doing) we hear mixed reviews. Most people seem to get some success when first deploying an auto-trap but the results tend to dip pretty swiftly. At Cacophony, we do value such anecdotal evidence (it really helps us understand the problems of using devices in the field) but we value hard, physical evidence even more.
10 Feb 2020 - 16:43
Shaun from our commercial partner 2040 Ltd has just published a new blog article which covers a host of recent developments with the Cacophony Project's Thermal Camera.
3 Feb 2020 - 13:14
The first version of the Cacophony Index is now live. The Cacophony Project was first started to attempt to answer a seemingly simple question: "is a bird population getting better or worse over time?". We now have a tool available which can start to answer this question.
7 Nov 2019 - 10:48
We recently came across a new and very cool piece of research which investigated the effectiveness of conventional trial cameras for detecting various North American mammals. To conserve power, trail cameras stay asleep most of the time and use a basic motion sensor to wake the camera up to take photos. To test how many animals were missed by the motion sensor they configured the cameras to take a photo every minute and also whenever the motion sensor detected triggered.
1 Nov 2019 - 13:37
Author: David Blake
David Blake is a semi-retired property investor who now likes to spend his time trapping pests and planting native trees. From time to time he helps out by volunteering at The Cacophony Project doing some filming and occasionally contributing to parts of the software.
3 Oct 2019 - 16:29
Conventional trail cameras are cheap and offer high image resolutions. They are designed for detecting larger animals such as pigs and deer. Thermal cameras, like those used by the Cacophony Project, are much more expensive and typically have lower resolution. Conventional cameras need an IR light source to "see" at night while thermal cameras do not.
5 Sep 2019 - 13:53
Some of the predator monitoring and trapping solutions we are developing require more power than traditional tools. This article explores why we think the effectiveness of tools is more important than power use for most of the applications we are interested in.
23 Aug 2019 - 13:26
8 Aug 2019 - 15:14
We have created a new tool that allows us to test many different methods to lure and capture predators of any type, using sound and thermal vision. We are calling this tool the Cacophony Predator Lab.
In this blog article, we will discuss how sound lure experiments can be set up to test the effectiveness of various sounds for attracting possums. The sound lure software is configured from a web interface that allows you to upload any set of sounds and play them at any volume or time sequence.
15 Jul 2019 - 20:25
Author: Ben McEwen
Hi, I’m Ben. I am a student in my final year of Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Canterbury. This semester I have been working with the Cacophony Project to explore improved ways of tracking animals in video footage for better predator recognition and for the elimination of invasive predator species.
17 Jun 2019 - 21:49
Recent testing of the Cacophony Project's thermal camera has reinforced how good this type of technology is for predator monitoring and control. This blog post highlights the core reasons that the thermal camera developed by The Cacophony Project is a great technology for this application.
The key advantages are:
10 Jun 2019 - 13:42
Authors: Grant Ryan, James Ross, Elaine Murphy and Merel Jansen
As highlighted in earlier blog posts, the Cacophony Thermal camera is much more sensitive for the detection of predators than the next best tool. It is able to see 3 to 50 times more activity, allows us to make observations that have never been possible before.
29 May 2019 - 21:46
Last week, Menno Finlay-Smits from the Cacophony Project participated on a Techweek 2019 panel which was centred on the idea of "Tech for Good". The panelists each represented an organisations that each attempt to "do good" in the world in its own way. We discussed various ways that organisations can do this, as well as emerging entity structures that focus on more than just profit.
27 May 2019 - 15:19
We have continued the rat detection experiments recently described on this blog and have updated results to report.
13 May 2019 - 15:24
Authors: David Blake and Grant Ryan
David Blake is a contributor to the Cacophony Project and has been running an experiment to test the relative sensitivity of Cacophony Project thermal cameras to off-the-shelf trail cameras for detection of rats. It is well
10 Apr 2019 - 13:53
Every year there are a number of compelling reports of encounters with the elusive South Island Kōkako. This precious bird with a beautiful haunting song was once declared extinct but hope remains of finding it alive and bringing it back from the brink of extinction.
22 Mar 2019 - 13:30
The Cacophony Project is fortunate to have many talented people helping to move it forward.
11 Mar 2019 - 14:55
11 Feb 2019 - 15:11
Grant Ryan from the Cacophony Project was featured on Radio New Zealand's Nine to Noon show on Friday morning. The interview covered a wide range of topics with a focus on the origins and philosophy of the project. Click below to listen for yourself.
28 Jan 2019 - 15:12
linux.conf.au, the annual local conference centred around the Linux operating system, was held last week in Christchurch. Linux is the basis for almost everything we create at the Cacophony Project, and Clare and Menno were there to talk about where the project is at and where it's heading.
7 Dec 2018 - 10:34
The Cacophony Project is an ambitious project with many moving parts. It can be difficult to understand what our technology does and how the various components of the project fit together.
Here's the high level parts of the project and how they relate to each other:
21 Nov 2018 - 16:22
We are often asked the status of the project so we thought it would be useful to share a table which highlights how we think about our progress. These are a set of milestones that need to be achieved to make New Zealand predator free. We define various phases that each milestone moves through as progress is made.
9 Nov 2018 - 12:12
On November 4 2018, the Cacophony Project was privileged to become a signatory of the Banks Peninsula 2050 Predator Free Initiative. Along with key personnel from DOC, Ecan, Christchurch City Council, Banks Peninsula Iwi and Banks Peninsula Conservation Trust, the Cacophony Project's Clare McClennan was present to participate in the signing ceremony held at the Living Springs amphitheater. This historic partnership aims to focus and coordinate efforts to eliminate invasive predators on Banks Peninsula.