Chelonia Limited

Wildlife Acoustic Monitoring

F-POD

Major improvements

Like C-PODs, the F-POD monitors the presence and activity of dolphins, porpoises and other toothed whales by the detection within the FPOD app of the �trains� of echo-location clicks that they make. This gives them much lower false positive rates than can be achieved by identifying the characteristics of individual clicks, whether in wav files or other formats.

The F-POD uses new electronics and software to capture more information and this has also made starting and stopping the POD easier. All other deployment procedures are the same as for the C-POD.

The F-POD is designed to give efficient and accurate monitoring of cetacean echo-location sounds for all odontocetes except the sperm whale (but it does seem to detect them!). The design builds on experience from C-PODs, from deployments all over the world, and incorporates both the lessons we learned and advances in electronics.

The POD's superior performance is based on automatic analysis of click waveform data (time domain data) and this has been greatly enhanced in the F-POD. The F stands for full waveform capture as it also collects more details of selected clicks. We have already see in these full waveforms a previously unknown time domain feature of porpoise clicks. Fast Fourier transform (FFT) analysis of longer clicks is also possible and the results can be reviewed and exported. The richer set of time-domain features of clicks greatly enhances the train detection that is an essential part of any system that aims to combine both low false positive rates and good sensitivity.

The F-POD:

stores more information of higher quality on each click to enable improved train detection and species classification, so the need for visual validation is reduced.
has on-board train detection that selects clicks in trains so that some representative full waveforms can be saved.
detects short dolphin clicks more efficiently.
has automated adaptation to noise so that it does not often max out even in severe conditions.
writes normal files to any micro SD card, up to 32 GB, without any special formatting.
runs two independent sonar detectors that detect and filter out boat sonars. A record is kept of sonar detections.
has much reduced 'drop-out' of porpoise clicks.
has an improved hydrophone with less Z-plane variation.
has a real-time clock which you can set, e.g. to local time rather than UTC.
takes lithium batteries without any modification.
runs with reduced power consumption when conditions are quiet.
has a deep-sleep mode which enables the POD to run for years, sampling every nth minute.
can be set to start at a later date.
can be set to switch on and off at different angles to the vertical.

For more details, see How the F-POD works and the F-POD specifications page. Software features that connect to ideas about acoustics, statistics, data analysis, etc., are expanded in several PowerPoint presentations available on the Downloads page. Software and User Guides for the F-POD are also available on the Downloads page.

For more information about using PODs, see the FAQ, Project planning and Deployment pages.