The Arribada Initiative is back with an update on our thermal elephant alert system which aims to reduce human-elephant conflict (HEC). Our idea for an alert system combines low-cost thermal sensors, machine learning, and wireless transmission to build an affordable system that alerts communities to elephant presence, giving them a chance to safely act before …

Why isn’t there an Arduino style platform for biologging and satellite telemetry? It’s a question that the Arribada Initiative has been working to address for the past 3 years, and today at the World Marine Mammal Conference in Barcelona, we were delighted to be able to reveal the release of an open source ARGOS transmitter …

I’m a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow. In around 5 months time I’ll transition to Alumni, as a Fellowship has a limit of 3 years. On the first day of my Fellowship I wrote a piece about the road ahead. Reading it back this morning, it reminded me of those early days, excited to get stuck in, …

A few months ago, I went tree climbing to become a certified tree climber, advancing Arribada’s goal to improve the design and installation of arboreal technology and provide project design and field installation assistance to our partners. The first step toward this goal was checking on the function of the Arribada Arboreal Monitoring Platform (AAMP) …

Arribada recently returned from field sites in Assam, India where we tested the image quality and detection abilities of low-cost thermal sensors for detecting elephants in conflict areas. Arribada is working on these thermal cameras as a winner of the WWF and WILDLABS Human Wildlife Conflict Tech Challenge. During these initial trials, we used a …

Arribada just returned from our first thermal camera field trials in Greenland, where we tested the image quality and detection abilities of our chosen thermal sensors in an arctic climate, our prototype camera design and looked at real installation conditions and areas for monitoring. We are testing these thermal cameras as a winner of the …

Our last blog post left you with preliminary test results of thermopile and microbolometer thermal sensors to be used in an early animal warning system. Funded by WWF and WILDLABS, this Arribada Initiative project aims help reduce human-wildlife conflict by creating an automated early warning system that will send alerts to communities when a dangerous …

I love daring activities, the more curious the better; night scuba diving, active volcano research, the highest bungee jump, flying trapeze. Which is why the first time I saw someone climb 40 meters into the uncharted and bizarre Amazon Rainforest canopy to set-up a research camera, my first thought was: I want to do that. …

Re-Cap If you read our previous blog, you know that we are developing a low-cost automated animal detection system to help reduce human-wildlife conflict. But in case you missed it, here’s a summary. The Arribada Initiative was one of two winners of WWF’s Human Wildlife Conflict Challenge and was challenged to use technology to reduce …

Conflict between humans and wildlife is increasing as human communities expand and wild habitats are destroyed. As a winner of the Human Wildlife Conflict Tech Challenge, the Arribada Initiative is working in partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and WILDLABS to develop a low-cost, open source early detection system to help protect both humans …