foreign
[Music]
thank you everyone thanks for coming
along
I just first like to say welcome to
Country I would like to begin by
acknowledging the people of the Kula
Nations the traditional custodians of
the lands of Nam and the surrounding
areas I pay my respects to their Elders
past and present
we're here to talk about some lovely
flowers
and when you have a flower you've got
pollinators so we're going to try and
set out to discover a pollinator for a
little flat an orchid that lives in my
area
so I live in at Bustleton Western
Australia right down the bottom South
West corner
of wa
and there are 117 native terrestrial
orchids in my local so you could say 50
kilometer area
um and these are some of them uh that
I've photographed and around in around
my area
um
and
yeah and so then you have uh pollinators
uh wasps uh bull ants
and you can see a thinner wasp there and
you'll see on its back
um the yellow
packets on the back polymer sex so
orchids well at least in my area
generally don't have fluffy powdery
pollen they've got pollener sacs and
they're sticky sacks that the insect
goes in and they just stick on the back
and it flows off to the next one and
propagates
so
and here's a thinner boss just to show
you the size of it so it's about 20
millimeters long and that was on my
finger just I'm doing something and all
of a sudden this thinner wasp lands yeah
whoa okay they don't sting native Wasp
from Australia
but uh so quite a few years ago now I
was
going on a walk and with a professor a
professor Mark Brandon brunderett
from one of the Unis in wa there and we
were chatting about pollinators and why
they were important Etc and he said well
coincidentally no one knows for he said
for example no one knows what pollinates
the uh helmet Orchid I thought okay the
helmet orchid's not rare it's
in the west also up the East Coast
so you know how hard can it be to try
and find the pollinator of the helmet
orchid
so coincidentally
um 10 years earlier than that
a lady Jenny was showing me around
and this is a typical example of the
habitat and so this log here
has about three species of orchids on
there and
um so you can see the the green leaf and
it's a beautiful log and it's it's quite
stunning when you see it all the the
flowers on it and what have you and uh
so I thought okay I'm she's showing me
this uh so let's go and try and find
this log and I can just base everything
from that
so
I set out this is remember 10 years had
gone past and she'd just taken me on
this and so I spent a couple of years
actually just every now and then feeling
the mood go for a walk and this is just
two of my walks tracking uh where I was
going so I could see uh it's in a
specific habitat so there's some areas
that I'd missed but I'd covered in other
years so uh yes but I did not find that
log because
it was a long way away from where I was
looking so this is one block there's a
track coming down through the middle
um but yeah so vagaries of memory
but while I was looking for that log
uh I found another one and this is even
more spectacular so this is a tree bow
and it is about yay far off the ground I
mean how nice is that photography level
it's just like a bench sitting there and
you can see all the helmet orchids uh
growing in there all those red the red
dots there as he walks off the stage
um about yay big or so
and it's very spectacular and you can
get up to 60 flowers all all on there
and it's all one species just one
species
so very pretty
and you can see all the Moss so the
flower grows in mainly in the Moss layer
um
yep
so this is the target species
um chorus
corbis recover the leaf is about 20
millimeters across and the flower is
about 10 millimeters wide
the top of the flower is about 12
millimeters or so off the ground so you
can see a side profile there and one
that's full on so on the if I can get my
mouse
yep so if you look inside here you can
see the cavity going in through the
throat
whoop
turn off and you can see so here we are
looking outside on the profile
so uh the pollen assaq sits in here and
the anther I think I'll talk about that
later is just a little bit further down
so it's like this inside the flower so
if that opening is 12 millimeters across
if that opening is 10 or so millimeters
across you can imagine that here is only
a couple of millimeters across if that
so whatever goes in is small so that
gives us an idea of what we're aiming
for
and
it grows in
mid to
July August in a dark wet Forest
so you think yeah that's pretty easy
until you go to that dark wet forest in
the middle of winter and you are covered
in maybe 200 mosquitoes
Etc so
yep
so there's another species
this one is coribus to spectons and it
comes out maybe two weeks afterwards so
there's a bit of an overlap you get
maybe two or three weeks with the first
one and then two weeks for this other
one this one is smaller so this is a
side profile but the opening is even
smaller so we're you know we're talking
about something this big the ground and
then it's poking up through the ground
there
but this is a quite a beautiful flower
so let's see what we can discover so
Mark came down and we made up some traps
and
this was our first go we tried a couple
of different traps that left hand one
did not work at all so that was a
failure but the right hand one kind of
worked a little bit we'd placed it over
the flower and it was raised up about
four inches or so above the flower we
caught some insects
but uh nothing will with a pollen a sack
on the back
um
um so we're thinking about that and then
the next move I think he came down
another time and uh in the meantime said
yep I'd found this thing called
tanglefoot from New Zealand and it's a
paint on really really sticky glue shall
we say
um
yeah it's transparent pretty neat stuff
so we cut up some first off we cut up
some just to what are they projection
yeah the old projection plastic thing
and we cut up some of those and we
liberally painted it with a tangle foot
on both sides
stuck them all out and we're sort of
finishing off the last couple of traps
you know we'd put them in different
areas log book noted where they all are
date time Etc all very good and we're
sort of walking back and I'm going how
are we going to collect those that's
going to be pretty sticky so we went off
to lunch and uh you know this is
very haphazard this project and so we
ended up just getting a roll of um what
do you call it Cloud wrap and just
coating that but not very good for
photography
but anyway we refined it later on and
um
yep
but uh here is some examples
from that first batch of
plastic sheets and so these are mainly
insects on there are mainly fungus gnats
the large ones there so they look like
mosquitoes but they're a little bit
smaller so just to give some size
context on there
yep
but later on WE refined that and um
I've got a fortune enough to have a
laser cutter so
standardized sized nice some grid
references so you can count you know
number of insects per per area Etc and
date time on the or date at least on the
site and the site name
but then how do you store those so you
got those out in the field so quick
thinking and uh yep in with 3D printer
and designing up a box 3D printing it
and later that night had a nice little
storage case for it and they all just
slot in there it was beautiful
so I now have many many many many many
many boxes of these these uh over the
years
yep
and we've had some results
so you can see there's three fungus
gnats there all with different shaped
polymer sacks on their backs fantastic
we're on a win
but then you think hang on
where did they come from
and was it even a plant in my area you
know I'm putting it over the plant
roughly or patch of there but maybe they
came from over there or maybe a
kilometer away
so uh at the time DNA was still quite
expensive I think it was about two
thousand dollars a pop we did talk about
that but this is citizen science and
this citizen doesn't have really or my
wife wouldn't think two thousand dollars
would be a pretty good investment but
anyway we've still got all of this so
over time think prices will come down
so we might be able to do that so I then
went around and tried collecting some
samples
so going around to each different flower
and then trying to photograph them and
I've got an array of
toothpicks they're just all toothpicks
to give us a size dimension it's pretty
small not very big
but better than pollen you know the
pollen I suppose that just floats around
right so time to go high tech
so I was pondering this I think another
year had gone past and over that course
of that year I thought come on Raspberry
pies must be able to do something so
um
I think I was in a Raspberry Pi phase
so set out with a infrared Raspberry Pi
camera
down the bottom I think
yep Raspberry Pi camera
ds-18 B20 it's just a small temperature
sensor very easy to use
um two SLA batteries
a sealed lead acid so they're about yay
big very heavy unfortunately power
distribution board so I the reason for
that is the current how much current
they this this rig uses so I could swap
out batteries makes it very easy for
that
but I've still got to Lug them in to the
forest
um
Electronics board yep so I made up my
own board Etc real-time clock so I can
do date typing of stamp uh stamping of
data and infrared floodlight
so started off uh with normal resolution
but it was just taking too long to take
a photograph
relatively speaking and so I found by
shrinking photographs down to 1920 by
1080 I could get a photograph every 0.8
of a second
so you can see where the 3.2 million
photographs might be coming in and yeah
I was taking 87 to 100
000 photos a day
at that resolution
and roughly a 30-day season and five
different flowers monitored per season
um
so building equipment testing it out on
a breadboard lots of fun and then on the
left hand side there you can see the
Barrow board moved everything onto a
Vero board
um with copious notes
love making notes
and that's how the rig looked just
looking down on top of it I was just
using it off the shelf for real-time
camera board sorry real-time clock at
that stage and various leads coming out
not very waterproof at that stage
later on I
had learned a bit more about making my
own printed circuit boards so I thought
right this is fine I think one of the
versions had failed you know changing
batteries once a day in the middle of
winter and in the dark because you're
working and by the time you've driven
there and walked into the forest it's
now dark and it's raining and so you're
trying to Shield everything with your
Poncho and changing batteries water got
in and eventually corroded the contacts
but of everything but so making up a
board was a real win
and you can use it for other projects as
well
uh did some 3D printing for it all
um sun shades camera sun shades flexible
battery terminals Etc
a lot of fun and also so how do you
waterproof a Raspberry Pi camera housing
so
did it first in MDF to make sure it all
fit and I think a couple of revisions
that was interesting and then into
acrylic and you'll see a hole there in
in the center just to give a clear view
through the uh the housing all glued
together
fantastic yep waterproof now hang on
that's got a real I think it's uh
infinite sort of uh the focus is like
two meters away and the flower that I
want is very tiny that's not going to be
very good so
um how do I focus luckily I'd cut a hole
there so I could
make up a 3D print this took a while but
getting it through into there and break
the lens the lenses glued into place so
you've got to sit there and snap it and
then rotate without destroying the
camera
but that all worked ended up with a
distance of about six and a half
centimeters
Focus
so there's the final rig we've now got
waterproof glands
waterproof USB
plugs Etc HDMI and Power
output
that's what it looks like in the field
uh just it's all pretty damp so laid
everything out this is just for when I
need to swap batteries
Etc and make notes make some
measurements and what have you
and that's the final rig in the forest
there
so you can see at the base of one of
those tree trunks
it's focused you can just see a tiny
little red dot there that's the flower
and there might be maybe 10 different
flowers around the tree stumped there or
treat base
camouflaged because people walk through
the bush with their dog and what have
you and there's maybe three four hundred
dollars worth of equipment there so
yep
so um infrared
Works day and night taking 0.8 of a
second to take a photo and initially I
went to AliExpress and bought one of
those infrared floodlights never played
with infrared before so I thought this
should be fun and a lovely floodlight
yes this works great in my room and put
it out in the field about that distance
away and it was just way too bright you
know this is floodlight for looking at
the back of the room sort of thing so I
ended up with an extension cord and it's
way over in another tree you know I
thought no this is this is wrong so
quickly whipped up a printed circuit
board at home and
soldered on some infrared floodlight
infrared LEDs Works a treat
but you can see here how close the
camera is to the uh the flower there
yep another shot
and that's what it looks like during uh
taking photograph
date time stamp each
no later on I date time stamp each
photograph and the frame number
um
yep about 100 gigabytes of data a day
so I've got to deal with that and this
is what it looks like during the day you
can see it's all a faded color and
that's because of
um
that's because of the infrared and
doesn't like color all that much but you
can see an ant walking over the top of
the flower there
so
um we're taking lots of photographs
and which is good and then I need to use
so how you know 100
000 photos a day
okay Paul there's only so many hours in
a day to look at all of these and you've
got to prep for tonight to take it out
so how am I going to deal with that well
opencv to the rescue and I should have
noted the guy's name but there's an
Adrian guy who was really big in opencv
number of years ago and he's done some
fantastic tutorials uh on opencv and got
some lovely Play books on how to do
things so mashing everything together
um but there's some tricks you've got to
learn to ignore the wind and winds
fluttering some flowers so I'd set up
some cyan boxes just to say ignore that
opencv and the magenta is the areas of
interest and so any movement of X number
of pixel like a pixel range it's too big
might be an air it might be a cockroach
walking past or something to ignore that
so it's just got to be the right size
and if so then copy that photo into a
subfolder so in the end I've only got to
look at maybe 500 to 2000 photos a day
and very easy just to flick through them
so this is the basic file process so
just carry over a USB stick every day
I've got to go there and
retrieve the stick put a new one in
copy to my home NFS
Nas store and then run a script which
will
every photo it takes is all logged into
a log file so just use that log file to
look at the date name of the the
photograph and then annotate all that
data onto the photograph so I've got
some good meta data right there so
visually
and it also creates a 800 by 600 pixel
copy of that file so opencv doesn't or
it's just it can be really slow if
you're playing with large files so it's
just good shrink it down and
um
yep and then turn all of those using
ffmpeg turn all of those into a movie
so I've got a nice movie at all and then
use opencv and motion detection to
detect what's going on in that magenta
box there and if it files things as I
said copy the photos into a separate
directory and log all of the findings
into a CSV file
so here's some results a uh ant climbing
out of a flower
it's interesting one thing I've noticed
is that there seems to be some sort of
glands on either side of the base inside
the flower just here and here seems to
be some sort of glands the ants like to
go there and just do something there
so um we've got some further research to
do on that
some Daytime Nighttime shots flowers
this one's interesting so opencv pulled
something up
and
and you think oh yeah yeah there it is
then after a while you've oh look at
that a crane fly had just perched there
and it sat there for hours upon hours
so that's maybe a fruit fly
and then over here maybe a predatory
wasp
very tiny we're talking uh maybe a
couple of millimeters maximum
and so now we're looking down inside and
a fruit fly is just about to go down
inside
um
and so this is the to show you the size
of that
so this here is the camera the sun shade
the weathershade on the camera lens so
the Raspberry Pi camera is this big the
housings may be this big there's the
housing and it's just looking down this
tiny tiny little flower and you're
looking down inside and there's the
the fly
so results over
a couple of Seasons two Bush flies for
seven to 36 seconds
um 36 seconds seems like a long time
inside I don't know what they're doing
down there but seven brown ants going in
for five to six seconds each and some
fungus gnats for 13 to 20 seconds and
the thinking was at the time that would
be fungus gnats so it was interesting to
see so many ants going down inside there
but I've yet to still uh it's been
unfortunate with uh personal life Etc
we've I've missed a number of years but
we'll be back at it this year
but there's lots of interesting things
so when you set the camera up you know
you're looking there you're spending a
bit of time there and you see nothing
it's just Barren you think oh this is
pretty boring
um but as soon as you leave within about
five minutes everything just comes to
life it is fascinating the the insects
the worms uh the mites that are all
crawling around it's yeah
so there we've got a spider in the top
left we've got a tick in the top right
I've never had a tick on me that's been
interesting don't know what that thing
is in the bottom right and then a
cockroach nymph or something crawling
around lots of spiders and you just see
these big like up uh horror movie or
something there's a big thing walking
longer
when you look at the video
so I love collecting data so uh yep
let's see how the batteries are going
um
current usage the Reds the current on
the right hand side there and you can
see
um night time versus daytime the current
because the uh using the infrared flood
lights turning on Etc
I love using gnu plot I've used it for
some other projects and it is just so
fast you know you're doing million
points of data and it's just boom done
so yep
and also you've got a lots of rabbit
Warrens you can go down for projects as
per usual and so I decided to build
myself a little Raspberry Pi based
battery profiling rig just dumping data
just dumping power into the Big Green
resistors on the right hand side just a
profile of batteries they were just to
see how they ran whether they'd run the
time Etc I was pretty happy with it all
yeah run times
uh temperatures logging all of that I
haven't really sat there yet to my
thinking was it'd be interesting
um trying to profile maybe insect
movement uh how active things were with
temperature
um and also the course of the season so
we're running July through August so
just you know over the course of
temperature the things wake up or do
they go away and while writing this I
was thinking oh it'd be kind of I never
really logged uh uh rainfall and so it'd
be interesting logging insect movements
around rainfall patterns and how damp
things are there so that's another
Improvement that will come up maybe uh
this year
yep
oh and I was happy that inside the Box
where do we go CPU temperature CPU 48
degrees or something like that I thought
that's pretty cool
inside a sealed container oh one thing
about that container so here I was
paranoid about water getting in and uh
that wasn't the issue the issue was ants
they love a dry place and I tell you the
number of hours I spent trying to make
that damn thing and proof it was
waterproof
but there's a lid you know that the lid
sits on like that so here's the base and
the lid sits over just trying to get
that seal around they're all ant proof
it was oh you'd be patching but visually
it looks fine but obviously not ants are
getting in
so anyway good laugh
um so 2016 I couldn't afford uh a bit of
context I couldn't afford a 128 gig
flash drive so I started off with 64 and
gigabyte and quickly found out that my
data was space was all being used up so
oops so that year didn't get much data
you know there's big gaps in my data but
luckily the following year I could
afford the 120 or something like that
for a 128 gigabyte flash drive so all
good
oh and one of the other intro I will
talk about on this page so some project
issues was
um yep so I've got a nice folder there
and I'm just sticking files in and uh it
just kept topping out at 16 000 and I'm
trying all these things and you know
you'd have to wait a day to see whether
it happened or I didn't bother just
dumping data in there but uh at home but
uh yep eventually found uh was it FAT32
is not your friend for this
so yep good one
um and then dealing yep and
108 gigabytes up to 180 108 gigabytes of
data per day that was interesting just
the time length and transferring files
back and forth
Etc running all the scripts some hours
would go past
uh yep
ah there was another one deleting
85 to 100 000 files in the directory you
just can't run RM space asterisks takes
way too like well it just comes up I
think it errors out so I found the left
hand command there works really well uh
or just
reformat the drive
battery power is an issue but now
lithium batteries have come on the
market so a lot more the at an expense
though
yep so out of all of that
um I got asked to go to Shenzhen
and give a talk and a bit about the
project and so and have a display there
so I love maker fares and this is the
only one I've been to but oh the only
place I've been to I've been there many
times but it was really interesting
seeing people's reactions to the setup
there and Shenzhen is also known as her
place where people like to copy things
and
yeah it's all business business and so
you're at a Maker Faire which is meant
to be friendly and open and what have
you and this guy's walking up with this
big huge lens photographing everything
like this and I'm going go for it dude
no worries you can take it take it I'll
give you the design if you wanted you
know it's no big deal
and another guy pestering me said that
rig is fantastic you could turn that
into a toy you know for a kid's toy or
something infrared photography what sort
of things you want to do with that and
uh yeah yeah that was going too far I
thought
but we had 50 000 people walk past over
a three-day period uh lots of fun
um my wife was there in the back there
and I'll just divert a little bit here
but it was interesting her she had on
her table she was doing she's wondering
oh what am I going to do there you know
am I going to sit three days waiting for
you so I said no no bring something
along so she brought along some fabric
squares about yay big she's into Fabric
and quilting and she brought along some
cruelters pens and had people writing so
people could write draw pictures poems
whatever you like on those squares
and um
there we are oh and she's doing LEDs in
dresses and things like that hat there's
a hat there with LEDs going going off
lots of fun 50 000 people three days you
just horse at the end of the day
or at the end of the three days and see
see some of the blocks there framed off
and uh met many many people and so we
got 650 of those blocks
um and I thought this is some of them
are really interesting stories so
another rabbit uh hole to go down I
built a as one does I built a my own
home scanner
for it and lots of fun trying to get the
angles you can see the aluminum bars
there they're the lighting and just
trying to get that the right angle so it
doesn't reflect back up to the Raspberry
Pi camera on the top there
uh you can see a Raspberry Pi display at
the end there and that's just showing
the making sure everything's okay but
you close the lid and micro switch the
light flood lights come on takes a
photograph and then goes off and you
know you can lift it up and put the next
block there
so lots of fun and then of course opencv
to the rescue uh uh it would extract the
image find the edges and then auto
rotate that was a nice little Nifty
feature so we've got all that digitized
and one day we'd like to maybe put that
online or something like that just to
show people with some lovely stories I
think
two years of sewing to put it all
together and she's doing the Makey robot
there
um
and it ended up to be four meters by
four and a half meters in size so in
2019 we went back to the make Affair and
they put it up there and to make of the
Shenzhen maker fair is
posted or the main sponsor if you like
is the seed s Triple E D Electronics
making small little hobbyist making
company and that's uh being on the right
hand side there who's the CEO of the
company and uh yeah lots of fun and it
was donated to the Shenzhen maker fit
there
so I think they've hung it up in their
boardroom or something
um
yeah
so
that's my talk
all the project information's online
um the thingiverse files are up there
Etc and a bit more information about the
orchids and fungus gnats Etc
thank you very much
[Applause]
if there are any questions yep we got
about five minutes
any questions
thanks for the talk Paul
um would it be possible to do some of
the filtering in the Raspberry Pi as you
capture the pictures either directly
with another Raspberry Pi doing the
words it looks like that one's been
overloaded
yes back in the day when I kicked this
off it was just the beginning of machine
learning well not the beginning but at
least in our in the hobbyist world
um
there there was no I don't think there
was any uh now you can get a little
plug-in boards uh for uh neural you know
processing Etc
there's not really that you know maybe
on a second one but uh it's a lot of
data and then you'd have to somehow
share the data between the two and I was
I didn't know what to expect
so my understanding of machine learning
at the time was you needed to have a
data set of images to say what you
wanted to see and I didn't know what I
was what sort of insects or ants or what
sort of things were going inside
yeah so I thought I'd play safe just
collect all the data it ended up so far
it's 2.7 terabytes of data so you know
people saying oh just send it off over
the internet you know and I'm going
right I'm out in the forest no
and uh yeah reception is poor and
um and I don't have a 2.7 terabyte data
plan so yeah the point was that you just
use the standard version section they
use for security cameras yep at least
the first cut yes yeah yep yep yep
um thank you Paul
um and favorite part of the story is how
you were so spectacularly nerd sniped by
your friend at the the professor at the
beginning I'd love to know what they
think about all this and and people in
there in their field is this is this the
most incredible thing they've ever seen
and they want you to do every other type
of species of orchid or
um or is this a regular thing that they
do yeah uh thank you
um
it's the weirdest I think but uh there's
people photographers who sit uh there's
a Victorian guy actually and he's done a
number of books
um
he has
lots of patients more patience than me
sitting out in the forest and with
mosquitoes buzzing around and ticks and
what have you
um he's done some lovely camera work
um
I was fortunate that this flower is
doesn't move you know it just sits there
um whereas you get the other spider
orchids and things like that and the
moving around so you think you'd have to
clamp some of the others
um I have
yeah I've had a go but the photographs
weren't all that crash hot you know I
think you'd have to clamp it somehow one
of the the issues or that I've got is
the cameras very close to the flower so
I wonder whether that is influencing
things
so yeah yeah maybe
um well now that uh Raspberry Pi
Foundation have come out with some other
cameras and you can buy other
third-party cameras that have zoom lens
Etc so it might be worth to try some of
those and they're not that expensive
get further back
hmm
um I think you're in the audience for
this talk yesterday from Dr mcgiver
about
giving students access to data about
giving students access to data sets to
do yeah a wonderful talk yes as well can
you imagine some sort of subset of this
that you could slurp her way and and
imagine students finding other things it
was really interesting things about the
temperatures yeah yes yeah yeah I've
wondered about that
um but
I haven't talked to anyone but it's
where do you store 2.7 terabytes worth
of files that's the issue I've got but
yeah I mean I'd love to it's open to
anyone if they want to play with it
hmm
if you know of anyone let me know
yep
okay thank you once again all right okay
thank you yep
do have a small gift
thank you
[Applause]