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RE: Minidisk data transfer and bat recordings

Subject: RE: Minidisk data transfer and bat recordings
From: "Graham M Smith" <>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 17:15:55 -0000
Walter

> > Indeed any suggestions to run these surveys better would be appreciated=
.
> > Ideally, I would like a recording tool that would run for three nights,
> > unattended with the recording activated by the bat call.
>
> This is possible with some MD recorders. My Portadisc, for instance has
> a function where it will monitor the sound levels on the input and
> record only when these are above a preset level.

That is useful, I am aware of Portadisc recorders, but as you say, a bit
costly for this. We are trying to build bigger and bigger arrays that will
allow us to track bat movement across a landscape.

> You could always see if you can sweet talk Cornell out of some of their
>   Autonomous Recording Units, those can be programmed in quite a few
> ways and are designed for this sort of work:
> http://www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/Popup.html

I will have a look at this, and for frog loggers


> A general thought, before generating such huge amounts of recordings
> that will have to be gone through make sure you will have time to
> analyze them. In quite a few scientific fields it's quicker and easier
> to collect data than analyze it.

Yes, this was the problem we had. We hadn't really thought it through, and
suddenly had hundreds of hours of recordings to wade through

> Note also, if you are listening to analyze that you can play the MD
> itself to do that,

That is what we did, we had a team of people, bookmarking every instance of
a bat recording, and then copied that section of recording into Bat sound
software for analysis, or at least some of them. In fact, in this instance,
the key needs were met through listening to the discs. The primary objectiv=
e
was to count the number of greater horseshoe bat passes, and these are
readily identified simply by listening to the recording.

>  I'd use my sonny MD deck that's hooked to my computer,

Is this the same deck as Aaron mentioned: the Sony MDH-10, or are there
alternatives to this.

I have also wondered about one of the Creative Juke boxes (can't remember
the model) but they now have a line in/out capability and will record *.wav
files directly from the bat detector: at least it looks as if it will. This
would give me 20gb plus of recording and they cost about the same as top en=
d
consumer grade minidsk recorder.

Many thanks for your suggestions.

Graham



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