Use of the LunAero Open-Source Hardware Platform to Enhance the Accuracy and Precision of Traditional Nocturnal Migration Bird Counts.

Quantification of nocturnal migration of birds through moon watching is a technique ripe for modernization with superior computational power. In this paper, collected by a motorized telescope mount was data analyzed using both video observations by trained observers and modernized approaches using computer vision. The more advanced data extraction used the OpenCV library of computer vision tools to identify bird silhouettes by means of image stabilization and background subtraction.

UnCanny: Exploiting Reversed Edge Detection as a Basis for Object Tracking in Video.

Few object detection methods exist which can resolve small objects (<20 pixels) from complex static backgrounds without significant computational expense. A framework capable of meeting these needs which reverses the steps in classic edge detection methods using the Canny filter for edge detection is presented here. Sample images taken from sequential frames of video footage were processed by subtraction, thresholding, Sobel edge detection, Gaussian blurring, and Zhang-Suen edge thinning to identify objects which have moved between the two frames.

Sensor array for wireless remote monitoring of carbon dioxide and methane near carbon sequestration and oil recovery sites.

Carbon sequestration and enhanced oil recovery are two important geochemical applications currently deployed using carbon dioxide (CO), a prevalent greenhouse gas. Despite the push to find ways to use and store excess CO, the development of a large-area monitoring system is lacking. For these applications, there is little literature reporting the development and testing of sensor systems capable of operating in remote areas without maintenance and having significantly low cost to allow their deployment across a large land area.

LunAero: Automated "smart" hardware for recording video of nocturnal migration.

Moon watching is a method of quantifying nocturnal bird migration by focusing a telescope on the moon and recording observations of flying birds silhouetted against the lunar surface. Although simple and well-established, researchers use moon watching infrequently due in part to the hours of late night observation it requires. To reduce the labor entailed in moon watching, we designed a low-cost system called LunAero that can track and record video of the moon at night.

Precision and Limits of Detection for Selected Commercially Available, Low-Cost Carbon Dioxide and Methane Gas Sensors.

The performance of a sensor platform for environmental or industrial monitoring is sensitive to the cost and performance of the individual sensor elements. Thus, the detection limits, accuracy, and precision of commercially available, low-cost carbon dioxide and methane gas concentration sensors were evaluated by precise measurements at known gas concentrations. Sensors were selected based on market availability, cost, power consumption, detection range, and accuracy.