Yeah, i feel like currently they are at about the price of camera traps 10 years ago. There is very little mass-manufacturability to them right now (it's all open source and made from off-the-shelf parts) but later if we can find more funding, we are going to make a design more for manufacturing which should hopefully drive the costs down even more! :)
> There is very little mass-manufacturability to them right now (it's all open source and made from off-the-shelf parts)
This is the obstruction to using them in an educational setting. If they were available for $600+ each but already completely built (minimal DIY), they would be more likely to get into (some) schools.
We have a group of kids in Rhode Island building some with the library there! Part of a "Wildlives" program where the kids also learn to put camera traps around the local nature!
totally! Right now we are just trying to get them out and tested on science projects around the world, but hopefully we can find funding to make more designs that could be manufactured in bulk (like the audiomoth and groupgets) and have even more of these things out and about!
We use some dielectric grease when we have to make some outdoor connections and it works great here in the jungle, and it also has the bonus of keeping the leaf cutter ants from slicing up your electronics too!
Hi! I'm andy! I'm the guy who spent the past year making the Mothbox! I don't know how this got on ycombinator, but cool! We are working here together Let me know if you have any questions!
Some quick basics:
It's an entirely open source system made from off-the-shelf parts made so you can build one yourself!
We built it to help a set of community reforestation initiatives here in Panama! (
Existing automated insect monitors we checked out wouldn't work for us because:
1) They were REALLY BIG (like huge heavy suitcase size+)
2) They were really EXPENSIVE (like 7000-15000$ !)
3) There wasn't any info to build robust ones that could withstand months in the rainforest!
So we build one ourselves! We started with absolutely no budget, and the costs that people have noticed ($375) are really the cheapest you can find these parts (Pi5 + big battery + 64MP camera + really bright lights), and for instance are on par with the $200 just for the 16mp logitech webcam employed in many existing insect monitors!
We got about 20 of these out in the wild here in Panama already, and are literally building more in the jungle as I'm typing this!
I think I'd like to get one to track insect diversity and populations in areas where I work on riparian restoration projects. My hope is that when projects are completed, in the following years it'll be evident in the insect data the Mothbox collects. Do you think that's a valid use case? Maybe I'd need more than one to get enough data?
Totally! We are using it for farmland and riparian restoration projects here in Panama. Everything is still very nascent, so we don't really have a good idea what amount of mothboxes would constitute "enough data," but the interesting thing about insects vs like mammal camera traps is that like even if two mothboxes are just 200 m apart, you can really see a lot of insect variation!
This is really interesting. That means I can collect data in places we’ve worked as well as places we haven’t, which should help with understanding what’s improving and what’s not. Hopefully the restoration sites will show improvements in some way or another over time. I’m excited to test this out. Thank you!
I skimmed through the user manual and find the design is really cool. It is well thought for the field use and obviously the optimized result of many iterations. Although I'm no naturalist, I find inspiration in your design. Kudos to the good work!
