Abstract
Automated methods of monitoring ecosystems provide a cost-effective way to track changes in natural system’s dynamics across temporal and spatial scales. Whilst much work has been done on automated analyses, methods of recording and storing data captured from the field still require significant manual effort. Here, we introduce an open source, inexpensive, fully autonomous ecosystem monitoring unit for capturing and remotely transmitting continuous data streams from field sites over long time-periods. We focus on the case of autonomous acoustic monitoring of tropical rainforests, but we give examples of how the modular design is easily modified to collect data from alternative sensor types in any environment with mobile coverage. Having surveyed the existing methods, we show how our system can outperform comparable technologies for fractions of the cost. The solar powered device is based on a Raspberry Pi, and transmits data through a mobile network link to a central server to provide a near real-time stream of data. The system is robust to unreliable network signals, and has been shown to function in extreme environmental conditions, such as in the tropical rainforests of Sabah, Borneo. We provide full details on how to assemble the hardware, and the open-source software running on the Raspberry Pi. Paired with appropriate automated analysis techniques, this system could provide spatially dense, near real-time, continuous insights into ecosystem and biodiversity dynamics for a low cost.