
Project: https://www.echometertouch.com/
The citizen science community has been blessed with yet another mobile application that serves all bat-lovers alike. Echo Meter Touch Bat Detector is a mobile application that allows users to listen to, record and identify bat species by analyzing their ultrasound calls. Though it might not allow them to check where Batman is or send out Bat-signals when in distress; it comes in pretty handy for those who research these weirdly sophisticated species that take the skies when everything goes dark.
The citizen science community can take advantage of two different versions of the application with the more expensive version offering an additional of control over sound and advanced settings. The application has Ultrasonic Modules that sense ultrasound signals, convert it to digital signals and then process the data to the mobile phone which can then be used for both analysis and storage purposes.
The Echo Meter Touch Bat Detector offers a range of functionalities for the citizen science community to exploit for various purposes including private and collaborative research. The application provides a real-time listening experience to bats using Wildlife Acoustic’s parented Real Time Expansion and it provides auto-tuning. Echolocations can be spotted, monitored and stored using the application and the various traces of bat echoes. The application’s automatic identification feature allows the citizen science community to determine the bat species by identifying the various bat calls. The application currently identifies several bat species across North America.
Citizen scientists can contribute to the scientific community by storing the recorded bat sounds as .wav files that allow sounds to be viewed. The application also allows users to add notes that can be used to provide additional information related to the sounds recorded. Citizen science projects that require location mapping along with sound recording can use the GPS functionality of the application to map their tracking data. This enables a complete map to be formed in the application that can be used to identify bat movements if required by the research project under consideration.
The application requires iOS v9.0 and above and is available for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.


