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Listening for illegal logging chainsaws using TensorFlow

471 points by dgacmu 9y ago

soVeryTired 9y ago
Anyone else wonder if google's on a massive PR drive given all the privacy-related bad press that tech has been getting recently?
- adventured 9y ago
  They're certainly in a prime position to try to say that they're not eeeevil like Facebook. They can sort of imply: hey, what did Google search, Gmail, maps, Android ever do to you? Microsoft and Apple are in a similar boat. It'd be sort of comical, if Google ends up benefiting from failing so spectacularly at social media. Amazon has a problem of terrorizing other competitors at the moment, that's primarily who is upset with them (spurring endless media stories about Amazon's growing power). Consumers mostly love them.
- bringtheaction 9y ago
  I don’t think so. Google is massive and people that work there have been doing lots of different research for a very long time. OP has nothing to do with the past days of Facebook stuff IMO.
  - soVeryTired 9y ago
    Yep, no doubt. But you can make choices about whose work you highlight to the public.
- alethiophile 9y ago
  If they're trying to get away from privacy-related bad PR, maybe "oh, by the way, we're capable of bugging the entire rainforest and analyzing the take in real-time" isn't the best approach. Heaven knows it's only driving me more paranoid.
  - loceng 9y ago
    The response to counter paranoia is to have trusted organization - that you can learn to trust, needing to learn how to trust as a pre-requisite - and regulation to counter bad behaviour and be proactive where reasonable. Any violent act, no matter the size or whether it looks like or is a so-called legitimate reaction/response should be a signal/flag for response. All of these systems can be used for good or bad, they can excel at either - the broken piece will always be a lack of trust and relationships with community. This is the fight between good and bad/evil, between light and dark. The nervousness caused by bad/evil should be used and funnelled into strengthening oneself, one's resolve. There may always be people trying to take advantage of these systems throughout history (perhaps at no fault of their own, we're born into the environment we're born into), however we can design systems for the environment and people to be healthy - health including being attached to empathy properly and to develop a practice of non-violence within society, and while educating to help people understand the value of these surveillance systems like tracking illegal activity in the management of Earth's resources - whether forestry, fishing, pollution; we're all fucked if we don't manage these. Not being a responsible being wanting to work together to manage these resources is very short-sighted and shallow thinking (primarily because of people stuck on scarcity/survival thinking), because we literally could all die if we don't manage these system. With economies of scale and automation we can do this - we can succeed. We can give an increasing higher quality of life to everyone than anyone on Earth has likely lived thus far. This isn't fiction, this is truth. Stephen Hawking before passing was worried capitalism will get the best of us though -- that is his rally call for us to stand together, to align, and manage the negative impacts that a capitalistic-transactional system requires; http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-final-reddit-post-automation-inequality-2018-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-final-reddit-... - the way we can honour this contributions to society is to, for those of us who are able, to stand and fight together. His passing on Pi day, the day Einstein's birthday, was no mistake - it's a bright beacon of light, the rallying call. Pay attention, stand guard.
- eitally 9y ago
  Since you brought it up... https://www.blog.google/topics/google-cloud/extending-gcp-security-us-government-customers-through-fedramp-authorization/ https://www.blog.google/topics/google-cloud/extending-gcp-se...
John_KZ 9y ago
Great, now you can't escape Google's tracking even in the middle of the fucking jungle. Those bastards will triangulate your position from the sound of your footsteps and send BigDog to slice you up.
- ada1981 9y ago
  Come on now. You are worth more alive. They'll send bigdog with a video ad display strapped to his side to "impress" you.
ForgorPsxrd123x 9y ago
Or they could legitimately be trying to make the world a better place along with making money. I know, naive right?
- John_KZ 9y ago
  Yeah it's pretty naive. Google trying to make the world a better place would actually be illegal and would place the managers in jail for defrauding investors. Google's mission is to make as much money as possible, typical tactics include creating a good corporate image.
  - eloff 9y ago
    That a company's mission is to make money for their shareholders does not mean they pursue that mission to the exclusion of all else. They can also pursue side goals, from making the company a nice place to work at, to giving back to the society which allowed them to exist and grow in the first place. Some of these goals may have little to no tangible results on the bottomline, which is ok as long as they don't compromise their main objective. You seem to like to view the world through a cynical lens which is no more true to reality than a naive lens.
  - IMTDb 9y ago
    No google mission is to maximize shareholder value. Making the world a better place increases shareholder value and is therefore compatible with their mission ;-)
    - eitally 9y ago
      The mission is to organize & make available the world's information... which coincidentally is equally compatible with increasing shareholder value. I think most people dramatically underestimate the amount of resources Google invests in all sorts of programs (including R&D, charitable donations, education, partnerships and so much more) because 1) they don't use it as a negotiating tactic, and 2) the cash cow of the ads business provides an enormously long leash for experimentation and. Even with Apple, which has more than double the cash (and cash flow), doesn't have this flexibility because of its business model. As a hardware company, volumes, revenue & margin are predictable and anticipated, baked into the stock price with an assumption of -- for the last few years -- dividends. Amazon is at the other extreme. Until very recently, as a result of AWS' runaway success, Amazon had posted negative-to-zero profits for its entire history, reinvesting nearly 100% of free cash flow into business expansion. No matter what you might think of Google, among the huge tech companies they're unique in their ability to spend enormous sums on things that absolutely do not directly increase shareholder value. The belief within the company, and within the investment community, that some of these moonshots & experiments will eventually stimulate stepwise returns are why they continue to run this way. It's cultural, and ultimately, one of the foundations of "googleyness".
crescentfresh 9y ago
I'm not too familiar with ML, do you have to "train" tensorflow as to what audio in the data is "definitely a chainsaw" and which is "definitely a logging truck", etc etc? As in, you should keep doing this every now and then as you get more and more data, at least in the sense of flagging false positives (so as to unlearn that particular sound).
- osipov 9y ago
  Yes. In the video there is a short snippet where the audio is shown as a Fourier transformed image on the screen and a user is annotating the image of the sound using red boxes. This is a part of the process to train the ML model to recognize chainsaw sounds vs. other sounds.
  - starchand 9y ago
    But can it identify lyrebird's?
    - stefanRfcx 9y ago
      That's a great question. Actually, one of the sounds that are pretty close to a chainsaw are mosquitos that are circling around our microphones due to the Doppler effect. We found ways of dealing with signals that are close to chainsaws by aggregating multiple models and also a time-based analysis. The system can draw causal/correlative conclusions such as a vehicle is usually present before a chainsaw. If there's no vehicle, the likelihood of a chainsaw goes down and the chainsaw model must be highly confident before we sound an alert.
      - tonic_section 9y ago
        How do you quantify the confidence of your model? Do you use a Bayesian model or just the log-likelihood? Because the latter can act strangely in some cases.
        9y ago
Rotdhizon 9y ago
This technology is really cool. My question would be, "What happens when your AI detects chainsaws or logging trucks?". Do you contact some policy authority, some international authority? Also, why are their cell phone towers in the middle of the jungle? What about areas deep in the wilderness where no cell towers exist?
- RainforestCx 9y ago
  https://twitter.com/lilitjejauregui/status/975855193521885186?s=21 https://twitter.com/lilitjejauregui/status/97585519352188518...
  - Rotdhizon 9y ago
    That's for small time abuses. What happens in the case of a full blown illegal logging operation involving a entire company? What about cases where things get violent? It's not uncommon for mining operations in the Amazon to end with natives getting massacred, the loggers probably not unwillingly to do that to anyone who gets in there way. When you come across a full scale logging op, do things get complicated?
    - privateprofile 9y ago
      Exactly. In that case they arrested a couple of poor peasants, but the people/organizations that both financed and enabled it walk free. Like with drug labs in the jungle, all this cool technology is great for detection but ends up hitting a brick wall of corruption when it comes to actually solving the problem.
    - bourhan-rfcx 9y ago
      Great points you bring up and indeed things do get complicated as you face a bigger and more organized operation. This is the case in parts of the Tembe territory in Brazil and it is the reason why we work with many partners and agencies on the ground to ensure that the data we capture is used wisely.
woweeeee 9y ago
Logging Man, I must have computers on the brain. This isn't about noisy server logs at all.
- ansgri 9y ago
  Being a non-native English speaker, I had to read the article to finally understand this isn't about chainsaws with embedded logging devicel, like 'black boxes' in cars.
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
  ...but now that you point it out, I would totally try AI log analytics.
  - woweeeee 9y ago
    Figure splunk and sumologic are weeks away from product releases, I’m sure. Either that or it’s already one of their consultant up-sells, for professional service add-ons, before they GA something standard.
RainforestCx 9y ago
Thanks for checking out Rainforest Connection! Seems that there are lots of [appropriate] questions about how well this works in the forest, and how our partners on the ground follow up on alerts. Here’s a recent intervention in Peru that sums up the process: https://twitter.com/lilitjejauregui/status/975855193521885186?s=21 https://twitter.com/lilitjejauregui/status/97585519352188518...
- O_nlogn 9y ago
  This is a really cool application of this technology, great work! Do you have any blog posts explaining the types of models you're using or open source repos that one could contribute to? (Asking as a ML/Software Engineer who's pleasantly surprised and yearning to contribute to something like this!)
  - stefanRfcx 9y ago
    Thanks! We are a relatively small engineering team and we were mainly focused on improving our system. This took a lot of effort and time, we just haven't had a chance yet to think about open sourcing or blogging. Our days were focused on coding. If there's interest in blog posts, I could write up some of our technology. Just let me know whether there's an interest and what you'd like to know.
    - getaclue 9y ago
      yes please!
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - tony_cannistra 9y ago
      I know that the US National Park Service Natural Sounds/Night Skies division has an incredible about of environmental audio data that's begging for automated analysis. This could be of much use to them. They do analyse their data, but it's largely been manual [1]. [1]: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6337/531 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6337/531
loceng 9y ago
Are there methods to change the noise of a chainsaw, as there's money to be made in illegal logging - they'll have the incentive if they're organized, so it would be quiet enough or different enough to potentially sound like it's "outside" of a protected area or not a chainsaw at all?
- bootlooped 9y ago
  Obfuscating it with continuous loud noises would probably be easier than trying to change the sound of a the machine itself. A lot of the noise comes from the wood being cut, so even if you could totally silence the motor there is still that.
- tzahola 9y ago
  Electric chainsaws!
- bourhan-rfcx 9y ago
  If and when they do that we will find a way to adapt and detect. The beauty of a real-time system is that you can make changes/improvements remotely without having to go out in the forest again and swap devices out. In fact, the forest is a very loud place and yet we are still able to detect the sound signature of a chainsaw. You can hear it for yourself here: iOS App http://bit.ly/RFCx-iOS http://bit.ly/RFCx-iOS Android App http://bit.ly/RFCx-Android http://bit.ly/RFCx-Android
  - loceng 9y ago
    Thanks. I was thinking and wondering how reasonable as a "next step" in protecting forests to potentially require GPS tracking on all or certain types of chainsaws - it feels like an absurd thought on its own, though it potentially helps solve the problem. This could then extend tracking to imagery via satellite - via geographic and density changes being detected, knowing where the GPS-tracked and legal work was being done, being able to then eliminate those areas from as high of scrutiny. Perhaps the GPS tracking is then not necessary if you can accurately compare before/after imagery, though could be a useful tool anyway for management to know how efficiently equipment is being used, if it's at where it should be and such. This reminded me of a story my father once told me. I assume he heard it because his father was part of the Ministry of Forest in Canada a long time ago: I believe it was during a world war (not sure which one) when I could imagine lumber would have been in constant demand. There was a bit of a trick and literal loop-hole that truckers would use. Before being discovered there apparently was a long route where truckers would go through without actually dropping off their lumber - after having gone to the weigh-in point to get paid. They'd continue to drive through the back to return another day with the same load to get paid again; a long drive apparently but still was a money maker..
aynsof 9y ago
Someone more familiar with satellites can correct me, but from my understanding you should be able to detect deforestation from real-time satellite data. You alert on changes in the level of greenery in the images. The indicator might trail behind detecting chainsaw noises, but it wouldn't require the mass distribution of detector devices.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tony_cannistra 9y ago
  This is being done by many [ex. 1], but you've identified the challenge: often it's too late to catch offenders once the satellites have seen the damage. [1]: http://data.globalforestwatch.org/ http://data.globalforestwatch.org/
- bourhan-rfcx 9y ago
  As Tony points out below it is often too late with satellite imagery and they can only capture after the devastation occurs. Our system is as real-time as it gets. In fact you can download our app right now and listen live to the sounds of the forests: iOS App http://bit.ly/RFCx-iOS http://bit.ly/RFCx-iOS Android App http://bit.ly/RFCx-Android http://bit.ly/RFCx-Android
- vpribish 9y ago
  real-time satellite imagery is not a commercial reality yet, but daily is.
- walrus01 9y ago
  one of the problems is that true near-realtime satellite imagery (90 degree angle direct overhead, visual spectrum or IR spectrum to detect tree cover) is quite costly, in terms of $$$ per square km, if you want images that were acquired recently. The older the data is, the cheaper it gets. This could be a huge recurring cost to buy new satellite imagery. If you want almost-true-realtime satellite imagery for land-use law enforcement purposes, you're looking at a project that required the financial resources of a nation-stage IMINT apparatus (US NRO) for example, with dozens of polar-orbit, LEO satellites. The best you're going to get from commercial sources is a couple of days old, up to a few weeks old.
ewdcmu 9y ago
"...sending all audio up to our cloud-based servers" Curious why they stream all that sparse data to the cloud over dubious cell networks. If they used AWS they could easily deploy that TF model to the edge using Greengrass ML Inference and just send up anomalous signals.
rhizome 9y ago
Does ShotSpotter have patents or something? It seems off that they aren't mentioned, but they're definitely prior art for this. Hopefully it works better for logging, which is to mean: at all.
- RainforestCx 9y ago
  It works pretty well, as demonstrated here in an event within the last couple of weeks in Peru: https://twitter.com/lilitjejauregui/status/975855193521885186?s=21 https://twitter.com/lilitjejauregui/status/97585519352188518...
_pmf_ 9y ago
How about detecting fraudulent blockchain ads?
- loceng 9y ago
  What would constitute a non-fraudulent blockchain ad? All ICOs are all designed to be the same Ponzi-Pyramid scheme, as how they're incentivized - which is what makes Bitcoin, Ethereum's Ether et al in the same boat.
  - proofofmoon 9y ago
    Most ICOs are speculative but not Ponzi/pyramid schemes. They do not borrow against previous investors' funds and they do not have referral DAGs. Do you consider Facebook's IPO a Ponzi/pyramid scheme?
joshaidan 9y ago
Have the creators of this project considered the privacy implications of capturing, recording, or analyzing audio from the rainforest? What happens if people are walking near a microphone and a conversation is picked up by the microphones? I realize that the audio is probably analyzed for the sound of chainsaws, and then thrown away, but there's still the potential that such a system could be misused. So just wondering what people think about the ethical issues related to this technology.
- beisner 9y ago
  Not really answering your question, but in the interest of protecting a critical ecosystem I think some theoretical privacy loss is an acceptable trade off. Privacy is not the be-all-end-all.
- Improvotter 9y ago
  I think you've a bit over-analysing it. I doubt the conversations are even audible at the places where these phones are attached. Then there also is the fact that no one will probably even get close to these for most of the time.
- eitally 9y ago
  Yes, people [at Google] think about this, probably more than in most other organizations.
- vpribish 9y ago
  worth thinking about, of course - but the great outdoors is not a private place.
- joshaidan 9y ago
  While reflecting on this--and ethical issues aside--it did occur to me that there's probably a lot more data you could collect from the audio gathered in the rainforest, i.e. what animals are active in what areas of the rainforest and what times, weather data such as intensity of rain or wind, volume of animal activity in a particular area of the rainforest, etc.
ada1981 9y ago
I love these guys! I helped advise them on their crowdfunding campaign a few years ago. One of my favorite projects. Hey Topher! Are you guys cross checking this with daily satellite imagery? I met with a guy who's company gets a full HD shot of the earth every 24 hours and they'd be happy to give you guys access to the visual data (they also train algorithms on it to detect all sorts of activity). Anyhow, I'll shoot you an email.
- bourhan-rfcx 9y ago
  Thank you so much for you support! We are not doing that at the moment but would love to hear more about it.
- pr0tonic 9y ago
  What company is this if you dont mind saying?
  - zapfranklin 9y ago
    I assume he is talking about Planet Labs (https://www.planet.com/ https://www.planet.com/) - a very cool service.
    - ada1981 9y ago
      Yes, this is it as far as I can tell.
    - XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y ago
      Do you happen to know what the pricing looks like?
      - notahacker 9y ago
        Representative pricing for multiple sources including Planet's RapidEye: http://www.landinfo.com/satellite-imagery-pricing.html http://www.landinfo.com/satellite-imagery-pricing.html Purchasing a before and after image of a specific logging site isn't cheap once you've factored in minimum order sizes, but it isn't unaffordable. Purchasing images to look at deforestation on a national scale (if you're looking at individual trees, not woods; open data will give you the latter) is millions of dollars per annum, but worked very well where tried to prevent illegal vegetation clearing in Australia.
GuyPostington 9y ago
If a tree falls in the forest, TensorFlow will hear it.
- dzhiurgis 9y ago
  > Hot deals on chainsaw chains in your area, click here for 50% discount
jjxw 9y ago
Had the pleasure of working with their engineering team last year as part of a pro-bono data consulting grant that a nonprofit I work on (http://www.deltanalytics.org/ http://www.deltanalytics.org/) provides. Excited to see how these systems are integrated into prevention / intervention and other applications for these systems beyond detecting illegal logging.
raisedbyninjas 9y ago
They're streaming audio 24x7 all over the Amazon, but I can't get a signal in the office hallway.
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
  Well, Amazon is already peered with major ISPs;)
crb002 9y ago
Deere Forestry and other manufactures have GPS coordinates of all major gear in Brazil. We don't need to use acoustics.
- RainforestCx 9y ago
  This is a super interesting tip — thank you, we were not aware of this (it is reminiscent of tracking of shipping vessels). Do you know of where and how we might be able to make these data available to local partners, like the Tembé tribe, and others? Do you have any contacts at Deere Forestry? Thanks in advance.
sol_remmy 9y ago
5 years from now: "listening for illegal speech in city streets using TensorFlow"
- ct0 9y ago
  sign language will be everyone's primary language. Better yet a combination of sign and spoken.
  - bronco21016 9y ago
    Neural nets seem to be doing pretty amazing with video as well.....
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    Eyebrow semaphore? Hand-to-hand Morse Code?
    - rashkov 9y ago
      I’ve been thinking a bit about wearable computing and pervasive encrypted communication. I think personal encryption could become more necessary in an age of deep learning enabled fake video and audio. Wearable computing could take readings from your body and environment as a sort of timestamp and fingerprint. It could also enable an easy way to type messages to others privately.
    - telchar 9y ago
      Atreides battle-language, better yet. The signal is encoded in subtle gestures to generate adversarial examples for the language detector.
- mars4rp 9y ago
  do you really think that happens? no way TensorFlow is going to be alive in 5 years!
grusel 9y ago
The title is asking for attention unnecessarily since the neural network will not be able to distinguish between "legal" and "illegal" chainsaws. It should just say: Listening for logging chainsaws [...]
- ada1981 9y ago
  Presumably they are listening in areas which are already protected from logging, so any chainsaws in this area are illegal if they are cutting trees.
stcredzero 9y ago
How about ultra-low power microprocessors coupled with capacitors, solar cells, and MEMS microphones, that can use a continual Fourier analysis to identify gunshots? The internal memory could be kept so small, as to preclude the possibility of recording someone's voice for longer than one phoneme. These could then be sprinkled around someplace like the gang territory parts of Oakland. EDIT: Seems that another commenter is aware of a company doing something like this: http://www.shotspotter.com/company http://www.shotspotter.com/company
fareesh 9y ago
Where do I begin if I want to set something like this up? As an experiment - my neighborhood in India has a problem with loud motorbikes that are illegally modified. Hypothetically if I wanted to use this approach (there are probably simpler ones in this specific case), where do I start? Do I just start recording gigabytes of audio data every day and start doing some kind of FFT on the data and manually tagging cases of loud bikes? After that I suspect I can use one of those ML cheat sheets to figure out what is the best model for this kind of thing and then I just send it data via the TensorFlow library? On the surface of it it feels like I'd be spending hours of processing time converting the audio data and hours of manual tagging before I get anywhere close to a solution. Is there a quicker or smarter way to go about this?
- notahacker 9y ago
  I'd start with the end goal. Is the acoustic signal from the motorbikes likely to be traceable to particular bikes? If so, would the local police actually be interested in following up? There is value in quantifying just how noisy the bikers are and for just how long they disturb the neighbourhood, but you'll probably need the perpetrators to be people the police are able and willing to stop to get anywhere.
  - fareesh 9y ago
    Yeah I've already spoken with the police they are down with nabbing these folks if there's video evidence. I could theoretically leave a camera running or simply trigger on high enough volume but for assuming I wanted to do it this way I'm curious about the best approach.
taggjefferson 9y ago
Congrats Topher and team! Awesome writeup, and look forward seeing you all soon for our next SC reunion dinner. -All the GridCure folks
LifeLiverTransp 9y ago
Next step, mine the rainforrest with sound detecting landmines? Technical solutions to social problems - any examples where this worked?
- John_KZ 9y ago
  Exactly. Not to mention that some other guy in this thread said that in Brazil now all forestry equipment is sold with GPS tracking, so there's literally zero need for such a device regardless. If they want people to stop chopping down forests they need to provide them with a differnt, viable source of income. If I was living in deep poverty and there was a forest near me I'd chop it down, no question about it.
  - LifeLiverTransp 9y ago
    The sole voice of reason- thank you. This money should be invested into fusion or solar research - if energy is cheap- somebody will find a vay to convert it into fast vat grown rainforrest- and voila-> Unemployed drunks protesting before the automatic growthlab and sawmill. Its very hard to prevent behaviour thats economical. Its way easier to subvert the economics behind that. If you want to save nature- compress agriculture into vats. If you want to compress agriculture into vats and buildings, you need cheap energy. Solving at source, instead of gimick-gasms.
    - John_KZ 9y ago
      >Unemployed drunks protesting before the automatic growthlab and sawmill. Or politicized unemployed people chopping your head off because you took their jobs and gave nothing back. It goes both ways. I don't think you understook what I meant. By giving them an alternative source of income, I meant the workers, not the corporations.
      - LifeLiverTransp 9y ago
        Maybee they can get jobs as click-AI- basically providing non-savant intelligence to AI-Projects. But my point still stands, if growning local and fast in vats- rainforrest wood would be no more economical viable. No pressure on any fusion researchers- but you could really save the planet right about now. https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3018/whatever-happened-to-that-plan-to-grow-square-trees/ https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3018/whatever-happ...
RainforestCx 9y ago
TechCrunch just posted a slightly broader article on the project: https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/23/rainforest-connection-enlists-machine-learning-to-listen-for-loggers-and-jaguars-in-the-amazon/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/23/rainforest-connection-enli...
walrus01 9y ago
> We’ve hidden modified smartphones powered with solar panels—called “Guardian” devices Question, how is the electrical PV power budget vs load budget calculated for these? Having implemented PV projects ranging in size from 300W to 30kW, I'm very interested to know what their predicted Wh per day generated from the solar cell is vs. what the load will consume (what's the actual load of the cellphone, how often does it wake up every day, etc).
- RainforestCx 9y ago
  Great question, and one that’s of particular importance in our design. Many IoT-type systems make use of on-device data analysis in order to minimize the most energy intensive process: data transfer. Our hardware focuses instead on getting full audio streams up into the cloud in near-real time, continuously, 24 hrs a day. This requires an exceptional amount of energy, as well as the ability to pool energy to continue operating at night and during poor weather. That said, we’ve really overcompensated on energy capture and storage—we operate under the assumption that we should be able to support 1.5 watts of continuous power draw 24hrs a day (normally it’s closer to 50% of this). But that means we try to be able to generate 35-40 watt-hours of solar energy for each day (on average). This is further complicated by the shady/infrequently lit conditions of the tree canopy. So, when direct light shows up (sometimes for moments or minutes only) we want to be able today capture as much as possible (high charging amperage and ample solar panels). Our batteries (LiFePO4) must be able to support this, and not decline over 1-2 years of use being fully discharged and recharged each day). We also designed a type of solar array that is specifically intended for the tree canopies. If this is interesting I’d be more than happy to elaborate more!
  - walrus01 9y ago
    That is a really good answer, and thanks for taking the time to write it up. The difference in instantaneous wattage produced by good quality 156mm monocrystalline Si cells is huge in direct sunlight vs shade. You can take a modern 60-cell, 300W rated panel (STC rating) and hold a piece of cardboard a meter away from it, to temporarily shade it, and see a huge difference. What size of PV panel are you using for each node, and how many/what type of cells? I'm assuming that for cost reasons and economies of scale that you're using some sort of standard off the shelf PV module that can be acquired in bulk, at low cost, such as a 156mm poly x 54-cell module. Or maybe something a bit smaller than that. 1.5W load x 24 hours x 31 days = 1116 Wh per month For a typical node what is your calculated PV production in Wh per month? Taking the 40Wh per day figure mentioned above, that's 40 * 31 = 1240Wh per month production goal from the PV. Will of course vary with mounting location and shading, but I'm sure you have a floor figure that you don't want to go below, or batteries will reach a LVD threshold overnight and everything will shut off. I'm also making an assumption that per-node cost is somewhat of a concern in general. For very small PV setups a decent charge controller (that can handle up to the max of one medium sized panel) is not very expensive. Are you using an off-the-shelf $65-75 chinese small MPPT PV charge controller with voltage levels set up to match your LiFePo4 battery setup, or something you've designed yourselves? something like this? https://www.amazon.com/DROK-Controller-Converter-Regulator-Charging/dp/B073PR56R9/ref=sr_1_5?s=lawn-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1521856393&sr=1-5&keywords=mppt+charge+controller&dpID=518HaEXKvpL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch https://www.amazon.com/DROK-Controller-Converter-Regulator-C...
closeparen 9y ago
“Listening for illegal logging...” “Is this about GDPR?” “... chainsaws” “Oh.”
Proven 9y ago
Do they sound differently from legal chainsaws?
moltensyntax 9y ago
If hypothetically the microphones could be fairly densely spaced, I'm imagining a VR game, where the graphics are dark and indistinct, but the soundtrack is real 3D audio from a Brazilian rainforest. You could add fast simulated motion, could be an intense experience.
garfieldnate 9y ago
Why just for kids? I wanna be a planet guardian!

471 points by dgacmu 9y ago

Anyone else wonder if google's on a massive PR drive given all the privacy-related bad press that tech has been getting recently?

adventured 9y ago
They're certainly in a prime position to try to say that they're not eeeevil like Facebook. They can sort of imply: hey, what did Google search, Gmail, maps, Android ever do to you? Microsoft and Apple are in a similar boat. It'd be sort of comical, if Google ends up benefiting from failing so spectacularly at social media. Amazon has a problem of terrorizing other competitors at the moment, that's primarily who is upset with them (spurring endless media stories about Amazon's growing power). Consumers mostly love them.
bringtheaction 9y ago
I don’t think so. Google is massive and people that work there have been doing lots of different research for a very long time. OP has nothing to do with the past days of Facebook stuff IMO.
- soVeryTired 9y ago
  Yep, no doubt. But you can make choices about whose work you highlight to the public.
alethiophile 9y ago
If they're trying to get away from privacy-related bad PR, maybe "oh, by the way, we're capable of bugging the entire rainforest and analyzing the take in real-time" isn't the best approach. Heaven knows it's only driving me more paranoid.
- loceng 9y ago
  The response to counter paranoia is to have trusted organization - that you can learn to trust, needing to learn how to trust as a pre-requisite - and regulation to counter bad behaviour and be proactive where reasonable. Any violent act, no matter the size or whether it looks like or is a so-called legitimate reaction/response should be a signal/flag for response. All of these systems can be used for good or bad, they can excel at either - the broken piece will always be a lack of trust and relationships with community. This is the fight between good and bad/evil, between light and dark. The nervousness caused by bad/evil should be used and funnelled into strengthening oneself, one's resolve. There may always be people trying to take advantage of these systems throughout history (perhaps at no fault of their own, we're born into the environment we're born into), however we can design systems for the environment and people to be healthy - health including being attached to empathy properly and to develop a practice of non-violence within society, and while educating to help people understand the value of these surveillance systems like tracking illegal activity in the management of Earth's resources - whether forestry, fishing, pollution; we're all fucked if we don't manage these. Not being a responsible being wanting to work together to manage these resources is very short-sighted and shallow thinking (primarily because of people stuck on scarcity/survival thinking), because we literally could all die if we don't manage these system. With economies of scale and automation we can do this - we can succeed. We can give an increasing higher quality of life to everyone than anyone on Earth has likely lived thus far. This isn't fiction, this is truth. Stephen Hawking before passing was worried capitalism will get the best of us though -- that is his rally call for us to stand together, to align, and manage the negative impacts that a capitalistic-transactional system requires; http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-final-reddit-post-automation-inequality-2018-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-final-reddit-... - the way we can honour this contributions to society is to, for those of us who are able, to stand and fight together. His passing on Pi day, the day Einstein's birthday, was no mistake - it's a bright beacon of light, the rallying call. Pay attention, stand guard.
eitally 9y ago
Since you brought it up... https://www.blog.google/topics/google-cloud/extending-gcp-security-us-government-customers-through-fedramp-authorization/ https://www.blog.google/topics/google-cloud/extending-gcp-se...

John_KZ 9y ago

Great, now you can't escape Google's tracking even in the middle of the fucking jungle. Those bastards will triangulate your position from the sound of your footsteps and send BigDog to slice you up.

ada1981 9y ago
Come on now. You are worth more alive. They'll send bigdog with a video ad display strapped to his side to "impress" you.

ForgorPsxrd123x 9y ago

Or they could legitimately be trying to make the world a better place along with making money. I know, naive right?

John_KZ 9y ago
Yeah it's pretty naive. Google trying to make the world a better place would actually be illegal and would place the managers in jail for defrauding investors. Google's mission is to make as much money as possible, typical tactics include creating a good corporate image.
- eloff 9y ago
  That a company's mission is to make money for their shareholders does not mean they pursue that mission to the exclusion of all else. They can also pursue side goals, from making the company a nice place to work at, to giving back to the society which allowed them to exist and grow in the first place. Some of these goals may have little to no tangible results on the bottomline, which is ok as long as they don't compromise their main objective. You seem to like to view the world through a cynical lens which is no more true to reality than a naive lens.
- IMTDb 9y ago
  No google mission is to maximize shareholder value. Making the world a better place increases shareholder value and is therefore compatible with their mission ;-)
  - eitally 9y ago
    The mission is to organize & make available the world's information... which coincidentally is equally compatible with increasing shareholder value. I think most people dramatically underestimate the amount of resources Google invests in all sorts of programs (including R&D, charitable donations, education, partnerships and so much more) because 1) they don't use it as a negotiating tactic, and 2) the cash cow of the ads business provides an enormously long leash for experimentation and. Even with Apple, which has more than double the cash (and cash flow), doesn't have this flexibility because of its business model. As a hardware company, volumes, revenue & margin are predictable and anticipated, baked into the stock price with an assumption of -- for the last few years -- dividends. Amazon is at the other extreme. Until very recently, as a result of AWS' runaway success, Amazon had posted negative-to-zero profits for its entire history, reinvesting nearly 100% of free cash flow into business expansion. No matter what you might think of Google, among the huge tech companies they're unique in their ability to spend enormous sums on things that absolutely do not directly increase shareholder value. The belief within the company, and within the investment community, that some of these moonshots & experiments will eventually stimulate stepwise returns are why they continue to run this way. It's cultural, and ultimately, one of the foundations of "googleyness".

crescentfresh 9y ago

I'm not too familiar with ML, do you have to "train" tensorflow as to what audio in the data is "definitely a chainsaw" and which is "definitely a logging truck", etc etc? As in, you should keep doing this every now and then as you get more and more data, at least in the sense of flagging false positives (so as to unlearn that particular sound).

osipov 9y ago
Yes. In the video there is a short snippet where the audio is shown as a Fourier transformed image on the screen and a user is annotating the image of the sound using red boxes. This is a part of the process to train the ML model to recognize chainsaw sounds vs. other sounds.
- starchand 9y ago
  But can it identify lyrebird's?
  - stefanRfcx 9y ago
    That's a great question. Actually, one of the sounds that are pretty close to a chainsaw are mosquitos that are circling around our microphones due to the Doppler effect. We found ways of dealing with signals that are close to chainsaws by aggregating multiple models and also a time-based analysis. The system can draw causal/correlative conclusions such as a vehicle is usually present before a chainsaw. If there's no vehicle, the likelihood of a chainsaw goes down and the chainsaw model must be highly confident before we sound an alert.
    - tonic_section 9y ago
      How do you quantify the confidence of your model? Do you use a Bayesian model or just the log-likelihood? Because the latter can act strangely in some cases.
      - 9y ago

Rotdhizon 9y ago

This technology is really cool. My question would be, "What happens when your AI detects chainsaws or logging trucks?". Do you contact some policy authority, some international authority? Also, why are their cell phone towers in the middle of the jungle? What about areas deep in the wilderness where no cell towers exist?

RainforestCx 9y ago
https://twitter.com/lilitjejauregui/status/975855193521885186?s=21 https://twitter.com/lilitjejauregui/status/97585519352188518...
- Rotdhizon 9y ago
  That's for small time abuses. What happens in the case of a full blown illegal logging operation involving a entire company? What about cases where things get violent? It's not uncommon for mining operations in the Amazon to end with natives getting massacred, the loggers probably not unwillingly to do that to anyone who gets in there way. When you come across a full scale logging op, do things get complicated?
  - privateprofile 9y ago
    Exactly. In that case they arrested a couple of poor peasants, but the people/organizations that both financed and enabled it walk free. Like with drug labs in the jungle, all this cool technology is great for detection but ends up hitting a brick wall of corruption when it comes to actually solving the problem.
  - bourhan-rfcx 9y ago
    Great points you bring up and indeed things do get complicated as you face a bigger and more organized operation. This is the case in parts of the Tembe territory in Brazil and it is the reason why we work with many partners and agencies on the ground to ensure that the data we capture is used wisely.

woweeeee 9y ago

Logging Man, I must have computers on the brain. This isn't about noisy server logs at all.

ansgri 9y ago
Being a non-native English speaker, I had to read the article to finally understand this isn't about chainsaws with embedded logging devicel, like 'black boxes' in cars.
yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
...but now that you point it out, I would totally try AI log analytics.
- woweeeee 9y ago
  Figure splunk and sumologic are weeks away from product releases, I’m sure. Either that or it’s already one of their consultant up-sells, for professional service add-ons, before they GA something standard.

RainforestCx 9y ago

Thanks for checking out Rainforest Connection! Seems that there are lots of [appropriate] questions about how well this works in the forest, and how our partners on the ground follow up on alerts. Here’s a recent intervention in Peru that sums up the process: https://twitter.com/lilitjejauregui/status/975855193521885186?s=21 https://twitter.com/lilitjejauregui/status/97585519352188518...

O_nlogn 9y ago
This is a really cool application of this technology, great work! Do you have any blog posts explaining the types of models you're using or open source repos that one could contribute to? (Asking as a ML/Software Engineer who's pleasantly surprised and yearning to contribute to something like this!)
- stefanRfcx 9y ago
  Thanks! We are a relatively small engineering team and we were mainly focused on improving our system. This took a lot of effort and time, we just haven't had a chance yet to think about open sourcing or blogging. Our days were focused on coding. If there's interest in blog posts, I could write up some of our technology. Just let me know whether there's an interest and what you'd like to know.
  - getaclue 9y ago
    yes please!
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - tony_cannistra 9y ago
    I know that the US National Park Service Natural Sounds/Night Skies division has an incredible about of environmental audio data that's begging for automated analysis. This could be of much use to them. They do analyse their data, but it's largely been manual [1]. [1]: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6337/531 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6337/531

loceng 9y ago

Are there methods to change the noise of a chainsaw, as there's money to be made in illegal logging - they'll have the incentive if they're organized, so it would be quiet enough or different enough to potentially sound like it's "outside" of a protected area or not a chainsaw at all?

bootlooped 9y ago
Obfuscating it with continuous loud noises would probably be easier than trying to change the sound of a the machine itself. A lot of the noise comes from the wood being cut, so even if you could totally silence the motor there is still that.
tzahola 9y ago
Electric chainsaws!
bourhan-rfcx 9y ago
If and when they do that we will find a way to adapt and detect. The beauty of a real-time system is that you can make changes/improvements remotely without having to go out in the forest again and swap devices out. In fact, the forest is a very loud place and yet we are still able to detect the sound signature of a chainsaw. You can hear it for yourself here: iOS App http://bit.ly/RFCx-iOS http://bit.ly/RFCx-iOS Android App http://bit.ly/RFCx-Android http://bit.ly/RFCx-Android
- loceng 9y ago
  Thanks. I was thinking and wondering how reasonable as a "next step" in protecting forests to potentially require GPS tracking on all or certain types of chainsaws - it feels like an absurd thought on its own, though it potentially helps solve the problem. This could then extend tracking to imagery via satellite - via geographic and density changes being detected, knowing where the GPS-tracked and legal work was being done, being able to then eliminate those areas from as high of scrutiny. Perhaps the GPS tracking is then not necessary if you can accurately compare before/after imagery, though could be a useful tool anyway for management to know how efficiently equipment is being used, if it's at where it should be and such. This reminded me of a story my father once told me. I assume he heard it because his father was part of the Ministry of Forest in Canada a long time ago: I believe it was during a world war (not sure which one) when I could imagine lumber would have been in constant demand. There was a bit of a trick and literal loop-hole that truckers would use. Before being discovered there apparently was a long route where truckers would go through without actually dropping off their lumber - after having gone to the weigh-in point to get paid. They'd continue to drive through the back to return another day with the same load to get paid again; a long drive apparently but still was a money maker..

aynsof 9y ago

Someone more familiar with satellites can correct me, but from my understanding you should be able to detect deforestation from real-time satellite data. You alert on changes in the level of greenery in the images. The indicator might trail behind detecting chainsaw noises, but it wouldn't require the mass distribution of detector devices.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tony_cannistra 9y ago
This is being done by many [ex. 1], but you've identified the challenge: often it's too late to catch offenders once the satellites have seen the damage. [1]: http://data.globalforestwatch.org/ http://data.globalforestwatch.org/
bourhan-rfcx 9y ago
As Tony points out below it is often too late with satellite imagery and they can only capture after the devastation occurs. Our system is as real-time as it gets. In fact you can download our app right now and listen live to the sounds of the forests: iOS App http://bit.ly/RFCx-iOS http://bit.ly/RFCx-iOS Android App http://bit.ly/RFCx-Android http://bit.ly/RFCx-Android
vpribish 9y ago
real-time satellite imagery is not a commercial reality yet, but daily is.
walrus01 9y ago
one of the problems is that true near-realtime satellite imagery (90 degree angle direct overhead, visual spectrum or IR spectrum to detect tree cover) is quite costly, in terms of $$$ per square km, if you want images that were acquired recently. The older the data is, the cheaper it gets. This could be a huge recurring cost to buy new satellite imagery. If you want almost-true-realtime satellite imagery for land-use law enforcement purposes, you're looking at a project that required the financial resources of a nation-stage IMINT apparatus (US NRO) for example, with dozens of polar-orbit, LEO satellites. The best you're going to get from commercial sources is a couple of days old, up to a few weeks old.

ewdcmu 9y ago

"...sending all audio up to our cloud-based servers" Curious why they stream all that sparse data to the cloud over dubious cell networks. If they used AWS they could easily deploy that TF model to the edge using Greengrass ML Inference and just send up anomalous signals.

rhizome 9y ago

Does ShotSpotter have patents or something? It seems off that they aren't mentioned, but they're definitely prior art for this. Hopefully it works better for logging, which is to mean: at all.

RainforestCx 9y ago
It works pretty well, as demonstrated here in an event within the last couple of weeks in Peru: https://twitter.com/lilitjejauregui/status/975855193521885186?s=21 https://twitter.com/lilitjejauregui/status/97585519352188518...

_pmf_ 9y ago

How about detecting fraudulent blockchain ads?

loceng 9y ago
What would constitute a non-fraudulent blockchain ad? All ICOs are all designed to be the same Ponzi-Pyramid scheme, as how they're incentivized - which is what makes Bitcoin, Ethereum's Ether et al in the same boat.
- proofofmoon 9y ago
  Most ICOs are speculative but not Ponzi/pyramid schemes. They do not borrow against previous investors' funds and they do not have referral DAGs. Do you consider Facebook's IPO a Ponzi/pyramid scheme?

joshaidan 9y ago

Have the creators of this project considered the privacy implications of capturing, recording, or analyzing audio from the rainforest? What happens if people are walking near a microphone and a conversation is picked up by the microphones? I realize that the audio is probably analyzed for the sound of chainsaws, and then thrown away, but there's still the potential that such a system could be misused. So just wondering what people think about the ethical issues related to this technology.

beisner 9y ago
Not really answering your question, but in the interest of protecting a critical ecosystem I think some theoretical privacy loss is an acceptable trade off. Privacy is not the be-all-end-all.
Improvotter 9y ago
I think you've a bit over-analysing it. I doubt the conversations are even audible at the places where these phones are attached. Then there also is the fact that no one will probably even get close to these for most of the time.
eitally 9y ago
Yes, people [at Google] think about this, probably more than in most other organizations.
vpribish 9y ago
worth thinking about, of course - but the great outdoors is not a private place.
joshaidan 9y ago
While reflecting on this--and ethical issues aside--it did occur to me that there's probably a lot more data you could collect from the audio gathered in the rainforest, i.e. what animals are active in what areas of the rainforest and what times, weather data such as intensity of rain or wind, volume of animal activity in a particular area of the rainforest, etc.

ada1981 9y ago

I love these guys! I helped advise them on their crowdfunding campaign a few years ago. One of my favorite projects. Hey Topher! Are you guys cross checking this with daily satellite imagery? I met with a guy who's company gets a full HD shot of the earth every 24 hours and they'd be happy to give you guys access to the visual data (they also train algorithms on it to detect all sorts of activity). Anyhow, I'll shoot you an email.

bourhan-rfcx 9y ago
Thank you so much for you support! We are not doing that at the moment but would love to hear more about it.
pr0tonic 9y ago
What company is this if you dont mind saying?
- zapfranklin 9y ago
  I assume he is talking about Planet Labs (https://www.planet.com/ https://www.planet.com/) - a very cool service.
  - ada1981 9y ago
    Yes, this is it as far as I can tell.
  - XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y ago
    Do you happen to know what the pricing looks like?
    - notahacker 9y ago
      Representative pricing for multiple sources including Planet's RapidEye: http://www.landinfo.com/satellite-imagery-pricing.html http://www.landinfo.com/satellite-imagery-pricing.html Purchasing a before and after image of a specific logging site isn't cheap once you've factored in minimum order sizes, but it isn't unaffordable. Purchasing images to look at deforestation on a national scale (if you're looking at individual trees, not woods; open data will give you the latter) is millions of dollars per annum, but worked very well where tried to prevent illegal vegetation clearing in Australia.

GuyPostington 9y ago

If a tree falls in the forest, TensorFlow will hear it.

dzhiurgis 9y ago
> Hot deals on chainsaw chains in your area, click here for 50% discount

jjxw 9y ago

Had the pleasure of working with their engineering team last year as part of a pro-bono data consulting grant that a nonprofit I work on (http://www.deltanalytics.org/ http://www.deltanalytics.org/) provides. Excited to see how these systems are integrated into prevention / intervention and other applications for these systems beyond detecting illegal logging.

raisedbyninjas 9y ago

They're streaming audio 24x7 all over the Amazon, but I can't get a signal in the office hallway.

yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
Well, Amazon is already peered with major ISPs;)

crb002 9y ago

Deere Forestry and other manufactures have GPS coordinates of all major gear in Brazil. We don't need to use acoustics.

RainforestCx 9y ago
This is a super interesting tip — thank you, we were not aware of this (it is reminiscent of tracking of shipping vessels). Do you know of where and how we might be able to make these data available to local partners, like the Tembé tribe, and others? Do you have any contacts at Deere Forestry? Thanks in advance.

sol_remmy 9y ago

5 years from now: "listening for illegal speech in city streets using TensorFlow"

ct0 9y ago
sign language will be everyone's primary language. Better yet a combination of sign and spoken.
- bronco21016 9y ago
  Neural nets seem to be doing pretty amazing with video as well.....
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  Eyebrow semaphore? Hand-to-hand Morse Code?
  - rashkov 9y ago
    I’ve been thinking a bit about wearable computing and pervasive encrypted communication. I think personal encryption could become more necessary in an age of deep learning enabled fake video and audio. Wearable computing could take readings from your body and environment as a sort of timestamp and fingerprint. It could also enable an easy way to type messages to others privately.
  - telchar 9y ago
    Atreides battle-language, better yet. The signal is encoded in subtle gestures to generate adversarial examples for the language detector.
mars4rp 9y ago
do you really think that happens? no way TensorFlow is going to be alive in 5 years!

grusel 9y ago

The title is asking for attention unnecessarily since the neural network will not be able to distinguish between "legal" and "illegal" chainsaws. It should just say: Listening for logging chainsaws [...]

ada1981 9y ago
Presumably they are listening in areas which are already protected from logging, so any chainsaws in this area are illegal if they are cutting trees.

stcredzero 9y ago

How about ultra-low power microprocessors coupled with capacitors, solar cells, and MEMS microphones, that can use a continual Fourier analysis to identify gunshots? The internal memory could be kept so small, as to preclude the possibility of recording someone's voice for longer than one phoneme. These could then be sprinkled around someplace like the gang territory parts of Oakland. EDIT: Seems that another commenter is aware of a company doing something like this: http://www.shotspotter.com/company http://www.shotspotter.com/company

fareesh 9y ago

Where do I begin if I want to set something like this up? As an experiment - my neighborhood in India has a problem with loud motorbikes that are illegally modified. Hypothetically if I wanted to use this approach (there are probably simpler ones in this specific case), where do I start? Do I just start recording gigabytes of audio data every day and start doing some kind of FFT on the data and manually tagging cases of loud bikes? After that I suspect I can use one of those ML cheat sheets to figure out what is the best model for this kind of thing and then I just send it data via the TensorFlow library? On the surface of it it feels like I'd be spending hours of processing time converting the audio data and hours of manual tagging before I get anywhere close to a solution. Is there a quicker or smarter way to go about this?

notahacker 9y ago
I'd start with the end goal. Is the acoustic signal from the motorbikes likely to be traceable to particular bikes? If so, would the local police actually be interested in following up? There is value in quantifying just how noisy the bikers are and for just how long they disturb the neighbourhood, but you'll probably need the perpetrators to be people the police are able and willing to stop to get anywhere.
- fareesh 9y ago
  Yeah I've already spoken with the police they are down with nabbing these folks if there's video evidence. I could theoretically leave a camera running or simply trigger on high enough volume but for assuming I wanted to do it this way I'm curious about the best approach.

taggjefferson 9y ago

Congrats Topher and team! Awesome writeup, and look forward seeing you all soon for our next SC reunion dinner. -All the GridCure folks

LifeLiverTransp 9y ago

Next step, mine the rainforrest with sound detecting landmines? Technical solutions to social problems - any examples where this worked?

John_KZ 9y ago
Exactly. Not to mention that some other guy in this thread said that in Brazil now all forestry equipment is sold with GPS tracking, so there's literally zero need for such a device regardless. If they want people to stop chopping down forests they need to provide them with a differnt, viable source of income. If I was living in deep poverty and there was a forest near me I'd chop it down, no question about it.
- LifeLiverTransp 9y ago
  The sole voice of reason- thank you. This money should be invested into fusion or solar research - if energy is cheap- somebody will find a vay to convert it into fast vat grown rainforrest- and voila-> Unemployed drunks protesting before the automatic growthlab and sawmill. Its very hard to prevent behaviour thats economical. Its way easier to subvert the economics behind that. If you want to save nature- compress agriculture into vats. If you want to compress agriculture into vats and buildings, you need cheap energy. Solving at source, instead of gimick-gasms.
  - John_KZ 9y ago
    >Unemployed drunks protesting before the automatic growthlab and sawmill. Or politicized unemployed people chopping your head off because you took their jobs and gave nothing back. It goes both ways. I don't think you understook what I meant. By giving them an alternative source of income, I meant the workers, not the corporations.
    - LifeLiverTransp 9y ago
      Maybee they can get jobs as click-AI- basically providing non-savant intelligence to AI-Projects. But my point still stands, if growning local and fast in vats- rainforrest wood would be no more economical viable. No pressure on any fusion researchers- but you could really save the planet right about now. https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3018/whatever-happened-to-that-plan-to-grow-square-trees/ https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3018/whatever-happ...

RainforestCx 9y ago

TechCrunch just posted a slightly broader article on the project: https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/23/rainforest-connection-enlists-machine-learning-to-listen-for-loggers-and-jaguars-in-the-amazon/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/23/rainforest-connection-enli...

walrus01 9y ago

> We’ve hidden modified smartphones powered with solar panels—called “Guardian” devices Question, how is the electrical PV power budget vs load budget calculated for these? Having implemented PV projects ranging in size from 300W to 30kW, I'm very interested to know what their predicted Wh per day generated from the solar cell is vs. what the load will consume (what's the actual load of the cellphone, how often does it wake up every day, etc).

RainforestCx 9y ago
Great question, and one that’s of particular importance in our design. Many IoT-type systems make use of on-device data analysis in order to minimize the most energy intensive process: data transfer. Our hardware focuses instead on getting full audio streams up into the cloud in near-real time, continuously, 24 hrs a day. This requires an exceptional amount of energy, as well as the ability to pool energy to continue operating at night and during poor weather. That said, we’ve really overcompensated on energy capture and storage—we operate under the assumption that we should be able to support 1.5 watts of continuous power draw 24hrs a day (normally it’s closer to 50% of this). But that means we try to be able to generate 35-40 watt-hours of solar energy for each day (on average). This is further complicated by the shady/infrequently lit conditions of the tree canopy. So, when direct light shows up (sometimes for moments or minutes only) we want to be able today capture as much as possible (high charging amperage and ample solar panels). Our batteries (LiFePO4) must be able to support this, and not decline over 1-2 years of use being fully discharged and recharged each day). We also designed a type of solar array that is specifically intended for the tree canopies. If this is interesting I’d be more than happy to elaborate more!
- walrus01 9y ago
  That is a really good answer, and thanks for taking the time to write it up. The difference in instantaneous wattage produced by good quality 156mm monocrystalline Si cells is huge in direct sunlight vs shade. You can take a modern 60-cell, 300W rated panel (STC rating) and hold a piece of cardboard a meter away from it, to temporarily shade it, and see a huge difference. What size of PV panel are you using for each node, and how many/what type of cells? I'm assuming that for cost reasons and economies of scale that you're using some sort of standard off the shelf PV module that can be acquired in bulk, at low cost, such as a 156mm poly x 54-cell module. Or maybe something a bit smaller than that. 1.5W load x 24 hours x 31 days = 1116 Wh per month For a typical node what is your calculated PV production in Wh per month? Taking the 40Wh per day figure mentioned above, that's 40 * 31 = 1240Wh per month production goal from the PV. Will of course vary with mounting location and shading, but I'm sure you have a floor figure that you don't want to go below, or batteries will reach a LVD threshold overnight and everything will shut off. I'm also making an assumption that per-node cost is somewhat of a concern in general. For very small PV setups a decent charge controller (that can handle up to the max of one medium sized panel) is not very expensive. Are you using an off-the-shelf $65-75 chinese small MPPT PV charge controller with voltage levels set up to match your LiFePo4 battery setup, or something you've designed yourselves? something like this? https://www.amazon.com/DROK-Controller-Converter-Regulator-Charging/dp/B073PR56R9/ref=sr_1_5?s=lawn-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1521856393&sr=1-5&keywords=mppt+charge+controller&dpID=518HaEXKvpL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch https://www.amazon.com/DROK-Controller-Converter-Regulator-C...

closeparen 9y ago

“Listening for illegal logging...” “Is this about GDPR?” “... chainsaws” “Oh.”

Proven 9y ago

Do they sound differently from legal chainsaws?

moltensyntax 9y ago

If hypothetically the microphones could be fairly densely spaced, I'm imagining a VR game, where the graphics are dark and indistinct, but the soundtrack is real 3D audio from a Brazilian rainforest. You could add fast simulated motion, could be an intense experience.

garfieldnate 9y ago

Why just for kids? I wanna be a planet guardian!