Instructions

Brief instructions ->

On a smartphone:

1. Long press start button (2seconds) to start
2. Put your smartphone onto flight mode and then re-start wifi (as you would do on a plane)
3. Go to ‘settings’ on your phone, select ‘Network & Internet’
4. Join wifi network called “WRECORDER” with password “brownkiwi” – it can take up to a minute for the phone to detect the new wifi network
5. Once connected to “WRECORDER’ over wifi, go to website 192.168.4.1 (http://192.168.4.1) – where you can setup the recorder start time etc.
6. Once you click on the ‘ready to go’ button, the acoustic recorder will shutdown until its calendar wakes it up for a recording session.

On a computer (MS Windows)

1. Same as on the phone except no need for flight mode, and the way to find a new wifi network will vary from computer to computer, but just imagine that you are connecting to a new wifi network in a cafe, it is the same process as that – but looking for network called ‘WRECORDER’ with password ‘brownkiwi’.

Please note, you don’t need internet coverage to connect to “WRECORDER”, it is simply a point to point wifi connection between the recorder and you PC or phone. The webpage that you see at 192.168.4.1 is generated locally on the recorder which acts like a mini web-server. So if you are out in the bush with no coverage, you can still set things up, all you need is your phone with its inbuilt wifi and web browser.

The setup page itself is a work in progress, it will be improved so you know what you have setup, at the moment, the settings you enter disappear from the setup webpage as soon as you click ok for each item. But they do get stored correctly on the recorder.

Pro-tip: When doing some initial trials for setup, once you have set the clock and calendar, setup the start time for the recording to be about 3 minutes later, and go for a 5 minute recording duration. Have a coffee and come back in 15 minutes to see how the recording went.

Some useful points:-

1. The minimum record time is 5 minutes, and the maximum is 600 minutes (10hrs).

2. After the recording is finished the recorder will try to get a GPS fix. In the indoor situation, GPS signal might not be acquired, but it will try for 6 minutes before it gives up and switches off.

3. So with the above two points, plus the 3 or so minutes before a recording starts in a test situation, give it 15 minutes after you set it up before you check to see if anything got recorded.

4. The SD card location is a bit fiddly in this prototype, this will be fixed in future.