[ExI] confused trees and bees, FW: Season's Greetings from the Federation

[spike]

>… On Behalf Of Alex Blainey
Subject: Re: [ExI] confused trees and bees, FW: Season's Greetings from the Federation

 

-----Original Message-----
From: spike <spike66 at att.net> 

>>…  We should figure out ways to use these unblinking eyes to do more stuff.
 
>>…But back to the original point, how can we ever notice collectively if things like millipedes, woodlice and roaches went missing?  …
 
>>>spike

 

>…Where are the bloody Roboroaches with micro sized hero headcams? Beaming back daily counts and classification of all the creepy crawlies they encounter. We are in the 21st century right? Come on entomologists, its already the future. get with it…

 

Cameras may be too much information, all those pixels coming back with images.  We might be better off trying to design some form of capacitive switch of some kind, especially since we can tolerate 10 or more percent error and still have a very useful scientific tool.  An ant should have some kind of capacitive/inductive signature, some kind of impedance device which would detect an ant walking nearby.  Or even something that approximates the impedance variation when various beasts crawl past, have it make its best guess if it is a roach, a millipede, an ant, a spider, or any other beast.  If we can rig such a device to use one of these cool new USB dataloggers, such as this one:

 

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/27937/27937-ND/1774413?WT.mc_id=IQ_7595_G_pla1774413 <http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/27937/27937-ND/1774413?WT.mc_id=IQ_7595_G_pla1774413&wt.srch=1&wt.medium=cpc> &wt.srch=1&wt.medium=cpc

 

for only 39 bucks!  Wouldn’t it be cool to set several devices like this around one’s yard to study crawling beasts?  I would extremely like that.  I might be able to rig an oscillator of some sort which would sense an ant or other bug.  Oh my evolution, we can make a buttload of money AND study wildlife.

 


>…CCTV or webcams may be a valid idea. A half decent lens and good resolution covering the standard 1 metre/yard square patch of ground. Plug in some movement tracking software and an algorithm to distinguish between a fluttering leaf and a bug making a track. Shame the little critter tend to make a point of being hidden.  A

 

Possibly, but if we do it right, an oscillator might be able to see moving beasts through soil.

 

Al, ya got me thinking hard on this.  A video image is probably more than we need for this task methinks, and even if we get that, we still need some kind of image recognition software of some sort, which is hard to do with insects probably.

 

spike


 

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