About this project
Is this just another nest cam?
No, this is not just images of cute baby birds! This is a complete bird science laboratory in your backyard. Designed by professional wildlife biologists, this device collects scientifically-valid activity, temperature, and other environmental data that you contribute to our crowd-sourced database.
Modular Design
The modular design of the units allows for unlimited customization. The standard module, which we are developing now, has temperature sensing, activity sensing (entering and exiting the box), and video. The modules can be installed in a wide variety of different bird boxes, as well as other kinds of holes or small spaces such as woodpecker nests. A wildlife rehabilitator (she's in our video!) wants to use these units in Barn Owl nest boxes. They could even be used in bat houses.
Online Social Network
When you buy a bird box, you can register it online in your bird box science account. Each of your boxes has its own profile page for data, pictures, videos, and more. Visit a demo of our website: birdboxscience.com
Uploading Data
In our current system, data can be uploaded via a thumb drive. We plan on iterating on this design and implementing automatic, real time, data uploading.
Data Available To All
All the data collected from the bird boxes will be made public for scientists, educators, and anyone with an interest in nest biology. Personal data will not be made public.
Risks and challenges
The hardware: We've been collecting astounding data with prototypes for four years, but we are making some final low-risk design changes to make a more user-friendly USB interface and better data formats.
The website: Our website is currently in its beta version. Users can create accounts for themselves and for their bird boxes. Features that still need to be implemented include access to the raw data, data uploading, and the user interface for viewing the data on each bird box profile. We are working with web gurus to ensure the Bird Box Science website can scale to handle the high volume of data we will all collect, and is totally secure for our user's personal information.
Because of the flexible nature of our product, there may be some risks and challenges that we may yet encounter. Of course, all this wouldn't be possible at all without you, our backers!
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Funding period
- (30 days)