Cacophony Blog | The Cacophony Project

Accelerating tagging using machine learning classification

15 Jan 2018 - 14:51

We now have many thermal cameras deployed at various locations collecting recordings every night. This means we have a lot of thermal video footage to manually tag every day so that they can be used to improve our machine learning classifier. As I write this, we have collected almost 30,000 thermal video recordings.

Our recordings include many false positives - where a non-animal object triggered our camera's motion detector. We also have many, many recordings of birds - particularly at dawn and dusk. Filtering through all the false positives and bird footage is very time consuming.

Some great initial results from Artificial Intelligence classifying of predators

22 Dec 2017 - 11:35

This is just a quick peek at some very encouraging results showing that Artificial Intelligence can successfully work out what it is seeing from the video. We will put up more discussion and details next year.

The raw video is on the left. On the right, the animal is identified and the cumulative classification of the animal is at the top. The instantaneous guess from the Artificial Intelligence is changing in real time at the bottom.

Video 1: Example of classification of animals using AI

Classifying Animals

1 Dec 2017 - 17:34

Hi everyone, my name is Matthew, I have been brought on to help with the machine learning side of things. I’m very excited to be part of this project.

My job here is to take all the thermal footage we have been recording and identify the animals in it.

New thermal cameras are about 5 times more sensitive than off-the-shelf trail cameras

29 Nov 2017 - 13:25

It has been shown that trail cameras are much better at detecting predators compared to tracking tunnels, which are the default detection tool. Trail cameras are between 2-10 times more sensitive at detecting predators than tracking tunnels depending on species. This is obviously very important as we need to be able to measure all predators that are out there.

The Cacophony Index 1.0

20 Nov 2017 - 11:16

Hi everyone, I’m Finn. I’ve been involved with Cacophony for a year now. I started out on work based around the Cacophonometers from a hardware and business model angle. Most recently I’ve been working on software and the development of a method to analyse all of this birdsong we’re getting! This post will describe the work I’ve done and basically what The Cacophony Index 1.0 is.

27 Oct 2017 - 12:12

If you're keen to help rid New Zealand of invasive predators and are a software developer based in Christchurch, you might want to take a look at this opportunity.

developer.jpg

High resolution heat camera – 100% predator detection

26 Oct 2017 - 11:09

In previous work we thought we had the ultimate predator detection camera. But our goal is to detect all predators so we have chosen to develop a higher resolution heat camera. Here's a reminder of why we want to detect all predators:

WWF Conservation Innovation Awards 2017

2 Oct 2017 - 15:22

wwf-bright-ideas-for-nature.jpg

Project update - Oct 2 2017

2 Oct 2017 - 11:25

It's been a little longer than usual since our last update. We've been busy!

Project update - Sep 18 2017

18 Sep 2017 - 11:47

We achieved some fantastic milestones last week!

Project update - Sep 11 2017

11 Sep 2017 - 13:54

Here's another look into what we've been up to recently.

Project update - Sep 1 2017

1 Sep 2017 - 15:29

It's been a busy week for the Cacophony Project, with good progress on many fronts.

Project Manager

As noted earlier, the project now has a new lead developer & project manager (me!) and I've spent much of the week getting up to speed. I've been reviewing the current state of our hardware and software efforts, meeting various advisors and contributors, and getting a grasp of our immediate and longer term goals. It's been fantastic to meet everyone and I'm really excited to be onboard. There's a real energy around the project.

Introducing myself

28 Aug 2017 - 10:30

My name is Menno Finlay-Smits and I start today as the Lead Developer and Project Manager for the Cacophony Project. We've got a real chance at solving the problem of invasive predators in New Zealand and I'm really excited to be part of the effort.

Cacophonometer - July update

27 Jul 2017 - 16:29

July update - now that's sounding like I might do regular updates...

What have I been doing?

More support from Spark!

27 Jul 2017 - 10:16

Spark have been a fantastic supporter of The Cacophony project.

All of our data is now being hosted on their servers in at Computer Concepts Ltd

Spark are providing free data upload for the project so all sound and video files use the excellent Spark network.

Summary Video Explaining Cacophony Project From NEXT Foundation

21 Jul 2017 - 14:46

The NEXT Foundation and ZIP have recently invested in the Cacophony Project and this will enable us accelerate our development plans.

As part of the NEXT investment they also put together a short video that very nicely explains what we are up to. They did a great job with this and it has proved very helpful in explaining concisely what we do.

Rotating camera could track 4-8 times more predators

13 Jul 2017 - 16:53

The latest innovation we are testing is a camera that can rotate around, up and down to follow predators. There are two main benefits of using this. First, we can see much more than with a static camera. The second, main long-term reason is that this will allow us to implement a kill mechanism that will not require the predator to enter a trap.

Video 1: First prototype of tracking camera

ISSUES AND OPPORTUNITIES WITH LIVE CAPTURE TRAPS

22 Jun 2017 - 10:10

Below are a few observations from our experiments with live capture traps. As noted in our previous blog post, they seem to work better than other traps we have tried. We know they are not the long-term solution, but we need some devices that are more guaranteed to take out predators while we trial different audio lures. We don't want predators to learn and ignore audio lures that we test.

Below is a video showing a few interesting things about the live capture. We explain these in more detail below.

Some traps seem 10 times more effective than others (and other interesting things we have learned from our new camera tool)

8 Jun 2017 - 09:08

Some traps seem 10 times more effective than others (and other interesting things we have learned from our new camera tool)

The main purpose of our camera and trapping over the last four weeks has been to test the new camera set up and get as many videos of predators as possible. We can then tag them in a way that artificial intelligence can learn the difference between predator species.

Ultimate video tool for New Zealand predators

30 May 2017 - 12:29

We have made some improvements to the video capture tool we have been developing to make it better able to identify all predators in the New Zealand environment. We have been testing our device next to a standard commercial trail camera. These are typically designed for hunting deer and pigs etc, so they are not tuned for smaller mammals (unless up very close). The device we are using has the following advantages that are described in more detail below:

Next Foundation, Zero Invasive Predators and Spark invest in The Cacophony Project

12 May 2017 - 11:01

We are very happy to announce that the Next Foundation and Zero Invasive Predators have made a significant contribution that will enable us to accelerate the development of tools for recognising, luring and eliminating predators.

Cacophonometer Update – Try it out

26 Apr 2017 - 15:59

I once heard that when you think an IT project is 99% done, you are probably half way there. A lot of work has been done on the Cacophonometer over the last few months and it is now ready for you to try it out.

Recap

The Cacophonometer is an app that runs on Android phones that makes regular sound recordings. It can be used to gather ‘base-line’ and ongoing data of the bird song near the device.

Recent modifications

Removing human voices from recordings to eliminate privacy issues

8 Mar 2017 - 08:49

Removing voices from birdsong.

One of the problems for the Cacophony Project to resolve is stopping the device from recording human voices (to avoid any issues with privacy). I've been performing some backyard experiments with some promising results!

New Position available with The Cacophony Project

1 Feb 2017 - 09:34

NOTE: This position has been filled.

We are hiring so would love to hear from you if you would like to join the team to help make New Zealand predator free. Job description below.

Lead Developer and Project Manager

TEDx talk on The Cacophony Project

9 Jan 2017 - 11:10

The short video below was presented at TEDx is a summary of the Cacophony Project. Feel free to share with anyone you think may be interested and sign up to our newsletter to hear about the latest developments (see bottom of page for email sign up).

Video 1: TEDx talk summarising The Cacophony Project

IT fun for a better world

6 Dec 2016 - 11:11

My name is Tim Hunt and I am a lecturer in Information Technology at Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec) in Hamilton, New Zealand. I first heard about The Cacophony Project, and the work that Grant Ryan and others are doing, at this year's ITx conference in Wellington. Grant's presentation outlined the 'big picture' aims of the project - to return New Zealand's bird life to its former glory, by using technology to help eradicate the pests responsible for killing so many birds.

Would you like to buy a Cacophonometer? Easy way to monitor bird song in your area

28 Nov 2016 - 10:10

A team is looking to set up a company to sell and distribute devices and services that use the research The Cacophony Project has been working on. The device records background bird song every hour for a few minutes and then uploads the data to the cloud. This way a reliable time series can be collected and there will be increasingly sophisticated ways that these will be able to be analysed to give you real objective data on the trends of bird life in your area.

New Zealand Open Source Awards - Category Winner

3 Nov 2016 - 11:10

The Cacophony Project was fortunate to win the science category of New Zealand Open source awards this year.

Gene drives as a mechanism for eradicating invasive species

1 Oct 2016 - 15:29

“Genetic engineering”. The very mention of it is enough to provoke a furious waving of hands followed by a litany of rhetoric that wouldn’t be out of place in the Old Testament.

biblical plagues

Scientific opportunities with The Cacophony Project

16 Sep 2016 - 10:10

The Cacophony Project is not a science project in the same way it is not a business project (link). However there are lots of ways the tools created by our project will be able to be used by scientists. Below are a few examples that we think are particularly interesting.