All the software our team uses for interpreting our birdbox data for use in real-world educational and scientific applications!
Eco Innovate was sparked in January 2024 by a couple of high schoolers looking to experiment for their club- but what we have accomplished and our ambitions far surpass what we ever imagined could come out of it, and soar above what the majority of student-led organizations do! From working together, to sharing our findings with our community-our founding team discovered a passion for solving environmental issues with state-of-the-art technology. So naturally, we are committing ourselves to this goal with our organization- Eco Innovate! We foresee many prominent collaborations, the birth of new innovative projects, and the flourishing of our original ones.
The existing decline in bird populations can be mainly traced back to several human factors. For example, tree swallow populations face severe declines largely attributable to rampant deforestation. The removal of forests destroys their natural habitats, disrupting the ecological balance, and affecting the availability of nesting sites and the insects that birds feed on. This points to a bigger issue of environmental damage as birds are natural pest predators that help maintain a balance in insect populations. When bird populations decline, the variety of insects consumed, flowers pollinated, and seeds dispersed may also decrease. Protecting bird populations is crucial not only for maintaining biodiversity but also for preserving the natural processes that sustain our environment.
Our project has had the opportunity to attend some of the most significant events in our city, such as the Engineering Expo, which showcased more than 300 student engineering projects from various schools and attracted over 900 attendees to the Fremont Downtown Event Center. We also participated in Fremont's Earth Day, an even bigger annual event hosted by our city. These events have not only raised environmental awareness among citizens in our community but also helped us connect with people who can assist us in enhancing our city's pest management and population conservation. For instance, we have gained the support of notable city officials in sustainability, including Elisabeth Huffmaster, a clean Water Educator at the Nature Learning Center under the City of Fremont: Department of Environmental Services, Nathan Ivy, a Service-Learning Waste Reduction Project Coordinator at Alameda County Office of Education, and Mayor Lily Mei, City of Fremont's mayor. This support has set our project on a hopeful trajectory for the future.
The Birdboxers project creates Population-Tracking Bird boxes across the Bay Area using Raspberry Pi computers and infrared cameras (accompanied by infrared LEDs) to take photos marked with their timestamp inside the bird box every 3 minutes, using bash shell scripts with packages such as lib-camera stills. Further, we have configured our project to store these photos into a pcloud photos album, using rclone copying software! The Pi is able to do all of this through manually enabled connection to wifi and cron jobs, which allow the software to start every time the Pi boots up. As a protective measure, we have also installed heatsinks, 3D printed a custom case with ventilation, and configured the Pi to send us email notifications and subsequently shut down if it starts overheating, if the incoming voltage it receives (via solar power) is too low, or if it disconnects from WiFi. To ensure longevity, our pi shuts down weekly for some scheduled downtime: during this period it runs updates, clears its disk space, and emails us a report of its current workings!
View our website to learn more: https://sites.google.com/view/eco-innovate/birdbox-project