I totally forgot to update the blog.
Last weekend I talked with my friend who is doing bio research about what device they are using for monitoring wildlife sounds. I found that the most commonly used device was AudioMoth, and what could make it better is to a. make it to separate the sound of birds from the background noise of new york city and b. make it transfer data via wifi since it’s currently using a SD card. So, I figure it’s gonna be a nice project idea.
I did my research, and find Imperial College London build BUGG (they used raspberrypi and used wifi to transfer). It’s currently used in Sound of Norway project. Yes it’s an idea that’s being done. Great, that means the project is perfectly doable. Is it still worth it to try do it? Yes, because trying to get bird sound out of the noise background is not something they’ve specifically covered (and it sounds fun). So, why not try.
To start the project I just bought ESP32 S3 with antenna and ICM 43434 mic just to see if I can try make the easiest version of it.
After I received it I realize I need to solder them. Last time I soldered a teensy it was not going well. It took me 2 hours and I almost messed up some pads of teensy. But this time I watched the full youtube video about do and don’ts in soldering. And I switched from a conical tip to a flat tip because it’s quicker to heat up the junction. Also I picked the new soldering iron head, which was not oxidized as the old ones. And I finished soldering my board in like 20 minutes. Yeah!
It took me 10 minutes to get the data sheet and figure out that the board has a NeoPixel LED on it, not just a red LED, so I need to use the NeoPixel library and tell it the RGB value I want. So it can blink in rainbow color now. We’ll see how far we can go for the next few weeks.
Bird of the (last) week The bird of last week should have been…
The hooded warbler! Me and my friend went to park for indigo bunting, but we missed it (again!). However we saw around 10 people gathering and taking photo of this cute bird. So I took a picture of it as well. The picture was blurry because I spent too much time on finding indigo bunting and was tired.
