Tracking kororā: effective and affordable electronic data collection
Steve Cosgrove1 and Andrew Hornblow2
1 Senior Lecturer, Whitireia New Zealand (steve.cosgrove@whitireia.ac.nz)
2 Educational Consultant – Internet of Things, 80 King Street, Opunake (andrew.hornblow@gmail.com)
Conservation in New Zealand relies on innovative techniques that have been used to assess the state of native species, protect and support remaining populations, and assist with breeding. Generally, equipment used has seen less innovation. There is merit in using monitoring and measuring technology that is proven and reliable, and in general, this strategy has worked at producing valid scientific data. Our project to learn more about kororā, little blue penguins, started with a different kaupapa to many ornithological studies. Rather than a primary focus on a research question, the aims of this project gave equal weight to involving the community in a project that would also introduce information technology elements in an innovative way. This case study outlines the original information and communication technology (ICT) used in the project. The transition is described as each ICT component is migrated to newer technologies that become available to the project team. The current components include low-cost temperature sensors to monitor borrows and RFID readers to identify individual birds. These devices are supported by a management ecosystem using the PicAxe education-focused microprocessor and the Raspberry Pi computer, which was also designed as an educational tool. LoRa radio frequency transmission devices, and the MQTT telemetry data protocol are used to move data on the Internet. The data can then be viewed in real time using a free plan from the Cayenne IoT dashboard. GitHub is used to store data long-term while making it accessible. IBM’s Node-Red platform is used to generate reports and display required long-term graphs. For almost a decade now simple tools have enabled remote monitoring at low capital and no on-going costs. Thermometry techniques have been used and proven to be a useful method of continuously remotely monitor nest occupation and kororā activity.
At the end of the day there will be an informal workshop and tech talk from the Taranaki kororā projects team
Researchers like consistency and certainty. Methods used to study birds have been refined over many years and there needs to be a good reason to change. This workshop will showcase some of the technologies used by the Taranaki kororā projects, with demonstrations of the operation of the equipment and examples of outputs that can be obtained. Come along and try pretending to be a kororā. Watch the results in our real-time display and see how that information has been used for this project. The emphasis will be on a researcher heavy, technical-light treatment, but if you want to know more of the technical details, you can find that too.
There are also elements of interest to those looking for a school project. Parts of this workshop and numerous other projects that Andrew has been leading came with a strong educational focus.