Graham,
> I asked if I could run the JB3 though the recharge socket and
was told you
> couldn't, but I suppose you could cobble together a connection
that used the
> internal battery connectors
Having done this with laptops, DAT recorders and other devices,
I was thinking of an inelegant soldered connection to the internal
contacts. Raimund's warning about approximating the expected
input voltage so that you don't overheat the internal regulator is
well taken.
> I have looked at the Anabat system, but they double the cost of
our sampling
> stations, However, they do produce a Delay Switch that sits
between the
> recorder and Tape/minidisk recorder, that starts up the
recorder, after each
> bat detector event, allows it to come up to speed, and then
transfers the
> recording to it. According to the blurb this is meant to work with
any
> tape/minidisk recorder, but I'm not sure I understand how it can
work with
> any recorder unit. I have emailed to ask for further information,
but had no
> reply so far.
One item lacking in understanding your project is what is the
output of the detectors you are recording (e.g., tuned heterodyne,=20
frequency division, time expansion)?
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, a general point that
Raimund alluded to is that analysis of even moderate numbers
of all night continuous recordings will emerge as gargantuan
time sink unless you have several computers to which you can
upload the files, then screen for and save acoustic events using
some software amplitude/duration (or more sophisticated)
trigger.
the Anabat delay switch needs a recorder that has a remote
switching jack, so that the delay switch can close its internal
relay (in response to an acoustic event) and activate the external
recorder in record mode. While such a jack was once common
on cassette tape recorders, it is less so on newer consumer
devices. If getting your minidisc or other into record mode
requires pushing several momentary switches in sequence,
getting it to work with this device could require challenging
modifications. The delay switch uses a ' talking clock' module to
record an audible time stamp along with each triggering event.
The delay switch does offer the field site triggering function, so
you don't have a real time record to deal with, but the audible
time stamps facilitate active computer analysis of a tape record
(i.e., a person listens to and records the time, then examines the
associated bat call sequence representation on screen). I
haven't used one in a long time and so am not aware of a way to
automatically recover event times and associate them with bat
acoustic events.
If you are only getting a few events/device/night this would be
manageable work flow model. With a lot of bat
events/station/night, this device may not be a good match for the
scale of your task without considerable volunteer labor.
Effectively the more expensive, but technically superior storage
zcaim mentioned earlier has replaced the delay switch/ tape
recorder combination for logging Anabat detector output.
Bill
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