Nocturn

In current harvest-focussed agricultural practices, farmers are criticised for the detrimental damage they cause to the environment. However, it’s difficult for them to recognise how their efforts towards the environment could effectively impact their yield. NocTurn bridges this information gap by leveraging the overlapping environmental and agricultural mechanisms of bats, making them mediators for the new environmental farming regime. As keystone species, they are effective seed-dispersers, pollinators as well as pest-controllers. Furthermore, as bioindicators, their presence within an ecosystem signals healthy inter-species diversity. These outlets elaborate and educate on the bats’ impact on their farms both economically and ecologically. NocTurn uses bats as mediators to enhance their population while keeping the mission is to champion farmers as environmental changers, through their conscious agricultural practice in a way that compromises harvest.

Ecological surveys are time-intensive, costly, detailed and confusing

Nocturn works in real-time, is constant, low-investment, understandable and relevant to farmers

Taking existing bioacoustic monitoring technology from the “audiomoth”, we capture nocturnal sound files. As existing bat detectors only pick-up the loudest and most proximal sound, they cannot capture effective count numbers. Furthermore they require further processing of audio files. Through a cloud-based server, we automate the species identification process, take out the middle-man and enable access to real-time data.

We tapped into the field of infrared night vision technology to record bat movement. We used computer vision to count the number of bats in a given area. By being able to gauge a close number and continuously track through this method, we can recognize fluctuations correlated to farm activity.

hardware x ai: detectOR

Home Device: Indicator

To communicate the bat activity detected on the farm, we designed an indicator to be placed at home. As the farmer returns from a long day’s work, they hand over their work to the bats. The indicator flaps its wings as the first bats of the night appear, when bat activity increases and at moments when a new species is introduced in the cycle. The indicator is an artefact that doesn’t need to be attended to but a gentle reminder of the efforts through time.

In-DETAIL: Mobile APPlication

To further learn more about the activity on their grounds, we’ve created an app that enables access to more pieces of data as well as guide farmers on further work they can get into for more impact. It shares images of peak moments in the night and allows users to listen to the bats on their own farm. Because though seeing generic nice professional photos is interesting, the fascination and personal wins come from seeing your own. In addition to leveraging the technologies sensing, we keep a comprehensive log of past days, deliver an information hub for each bat species in their area, how they act, what they eat and how it can benefit the farmers work. Finally, we share some key pointers for farmers to further learn about how they can tweak their landscape to be more bat friendly, therefore more diverse. We hope that though initially, it might be hard for them to take very large actions like reducing pesticide usage, in the long run, they will verify that the bats are enabling them to count back on those practices.