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Update on iPhones for Owls (What software the Owl Research Institute uses)

This is an update to the iPhones for Owls post from earlier this week. The Owl Research Institute is looking for donated iPhones for their work. One of you asked for more info on what they'd be used for, so I emailed them to ask. Here's what I found out:

Hi xxxxxxxxxx, Thank you for sharing our social media post! We are currently setting up ArcGIS software and our new part time employee Troy Gruetzmacher (who has also started an ARU company called owlsense.co) is helping us with writing some software to analyze the data we collect. Finger's crossed we get some great iPhone donations! Thank you again for spreading the word and for your interest in Owls and the ORI. Warm regards, Jeanna Clifford Communications Director ORI

ArcGIS looks to be interactive mapping software. From Wikipedia:

ArcGIS is built around a geodatabase, which uses an object–relational database approach for storing spatial data. A geodatabase is a "container" for holding datasets, tying together the spatial features with attributes. The geodatabase can also contain topology information, and can model behavior of features, such as road intersections, with rules on how features relate to one another.[68] When working with geodatabases, it is important to understand feature classes which are a set of features, represented with points, lines, or polygons. With shapefiles, each file can only handle one type of feature. A geodatabase can store multiple feature classes or type of features within one file.

They have some free maps with public access, such as this Active US Forest Fires map you can explore to get an idea of how it works to visualize data. Here's another one of US Air Quality data.

It's not difficult to imagine many possible uses tracking owls, nesting sites, etc.

Owl Sense makes cheap but effective ARUs, autonomous recording units. It's link a trail camera, but for sound instead of photos. From Wikipedia:

An autonomous recording unit (ARU) is a self-contained audio recording device that is deployed in marine or terrestrial environments for bioacoustical monitoring. The unit is used in both marine and terrestrial environments to track the behavior of animals and monitor their ecosystems. On a terrestrial level, the ARU can detect noises coming from bird habitats and determine relative emotions that each bird conveys along with the population of the birds and the relative vulnerability of the ecosystem.

The wiki link also mentions that the software for don't can shift the sounds of cetaceans to frequencies humans can actually hear, which seems helpful.

I did find one of Burrow Owl habitats in part of California, but it doesn't show much so I grabbed it for a screenshot.

The Owl Sense device uses an iOS app to do its configuration. Here's the app link if you'd like to see it, but it just looks like a big settings screen.

Here's the guy working on it. He says he developed it originally to track Great Grays.

I hope that was helpful. Big thanks again to those of you that said you had some to send them. If you know anyone that has some, spread the word!

Here's the info again for anyone but wanting to go to the Facebook link.

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4 comments

  • I'm all for helping owls but why use iPhones? It seems costly and brutally inefficient.

    • I'm an Android user myself so I don't know if there's something specific about the iPhone or if it's just easier for the guy to make the app without having to test in various Android devices for compatibility.

      At my last job we had scanners that basically were just shells for iPhones. The ones before that used iPod Touches of all things.

      iPhone has about a 60% market share in the US, so it seems they shouldn't be more difficult to get and it's probably just easier to give everyone relatively the same device when they're probably collecting more than they are purchasing.

      With only about a dozen people in the organization as far as I can tell, keeping it simple to save time is probably important.

      Edit: After doing some light Googling, iPhone is often used for the simplicity it provides in managing devices and integration between devices.

      Most of the sys admins in the comments say even if they are personally Android users, they prefer managing an iOS fleet of devices. The second choice was Samsung due to Knox helping simplify things, but that would limit a place like ORI relying on donated phones to a smaller pool of devices.

      I imagine they also have to train their people to use these things, and it's not like they have an IT department in the woods, and this way they only need one set of work instructions and if they need to troubleshoot in the field, they are all working on the same device.

      I went from a Samsung S8 to a Pixel 7 and now I have an S23 for work, and I don't like jumping between phones because the buttons are in different places and the UI is pretty different, even with me running Nova on both.

      So simplicity, uniformity, compatibility, and availability all seem to make iPhones sound like a good choice in this use case.

      Lemmy seems to lean strong FOSS and anti-corprorate, which I don't disagree with, but if we are talking about selecting things for a business vs ourselves, it's important to understand we may be working with different priorities.