Bio-acoustic monitoring systems supplier to agencies involved in monitoring threatened and endangered wildlife species, Wildlife Acoustics has announced the release of the Echo Meter EM3, a device for detection and recording of bat activity.
The President of Wildlife Acoustics, Ian Agranat explained that the company’s experience in acoustic and ultrasonic monitoring has been applied to make the monitoring technology available to bat researchers.
Echo Meter EM3 bat detector
More affordable than competitor brands, the handheld Echo Meter EM3 recorder/detector contains inbuilt rechargeable batteries and weighs less than 0.35 kg. Easy to hold, the EM3 is a self-contained unit that does not require any additional hardware for recording and monitoring bat activity. The device also features a SDHC memory card enabling researchers to begin monitoring activity upon the arrival of the product. A microphone technology enables for ultrasonic bat detection from the ground up. A bat researcher at the US-based Cascadia Research, Greg Falxa stated that the high-frequency response of the microphone technology featured in the EM3 allowed for the rendering and capturing of the calls harmonic content. Falxa added that the EM3 trigger feature coupled with the optional GPS is helpful in driving surveys.
A built-in spectrogram feature displays current as well as recent bat passes in compressed or expanded mode. The bat calls can be monitored through the device’s speaker or by the use of headphones. While the researcher is listening to the bat calls, the passes are simultaneously recorded using the Frequency Division, Heterodyne or Real Time Expansion modes. The EM3 device is also capable of capturing voice notes simultaneously with bat passes in the very same trigger to facilitate direct correlation. Bat calls can be also be tagged or categorized by the active handheld detector in real-time.