Some environmental monitoring programs may require large inventories of equipment in order to meet survey objectives and sample size. The ABMI and BU alone manage thousands of cameras and ARUs for a multitude of purposes. With this comes quality assurance and control of the equipment itself, and not just the data it collects.
The ABMI and BU offer standards and protocols for some of the major types of ARUs and cameras on the marketplace and provide standard practices for environmental sensor repair and assessment that go far beyond the objectives of this book. The goal of the Equipment tab in WildTrax is to centralize your environmental sensor monitoring equipment and keep track of its operational status within the provided forms.
WildTrax does not make direct recommendations on how to repair or operate sensor equipment given their usage extends beyond its operating functionalities. However, we encourages sharing and collaboration to create standard protocols. Environmental sensors are rugged but long periods of field activity gradually reduce their functionality, as with any equipment exposed to the elements. Researchers are encouraged to ensure their equipment is functioning properly before collecting data.
Just like with locations and visits, you can batch upload and download equipment and equipment metadata by clicking the Manage button. Here are the fields and descriptions for the CSV upload.
- Equipment make: the make (manufacturer) of a particular sensor (e.g., “Wildlife Acoustics”, “Reconyx”)
- Equipment model: the model number of a particular sensor (e.g,. “SM2”, “PC900”)
- Equipment serial number: the serial number of the particular sensor (e.g., H600HJ2269118)
- Equipment purchase date: the date the equipment was purchased
- Equipment type: the type of equipment (e.g., “SD card”, “ARU”, “camera”, “microphone”)
- Equipment status: the status of the equipment (e.g. “Active”, “Broken”, “Loaned Out”)
To sync your equipment:
- Click the Download Equipment CSV button to get the current list of all equipment and metadata in your organization. If you don’t have any metadata yet, the CSV will provide the column headers.
- Conduct the edits or changes to your CSV.
- Click on Upload Equipment CSV.
- This will take you to the Upload CSV form; choose your local CSV file and click Preview Changes – this will allow you to preview the changes you’ll be making to your location data. If there are no differences, a prompt indicating No changes detected in this file will appear.
- To accept the modifications, scroll down and click Apply Changes.
Remember, equipment can be added when you add visit metadata as well.