What equipment do I need to use Omnibat?

Omnibat does not require the soundfiles to have been recorded with any special hardware. Instead Omnibat can use any time expanded .wav or .mp3 file (and some other formats). This means that there is a wide range of hardware available for sound collection. You can use a bat detector wired to a mp3 player, direct sound input from a mic to laptop, integrated detector and recording solutions or any other equipment that generates the requested data files.

Indata parameters
1. The recording has to be a "full-spectrum" recording. What this means is that frequency and time data must be included in the recorded file without interruptions (So Anabat recording do NOT work, although this is something we are looking into)
2. If the recording is saved on a very high frequency, such as with the Petterson D500x, Omnibat automatically converts the file to x10 time expansion
3. If the recording is made in the "normal" frequecy spectrum, as with a standard mp3 player, it has to be recorded in x10 time expansion mode.
4. The file format must be: Mp3, Wav, Ogg, flac, Aiff (We also support a few less common formats, contact us on the forum if you have questions regarding other file working formats)
5. The database template uses frequencies up to about 225 khz when making automatic IDs.

Integrated recording solutions
Automatic recording equipment that output suitable files for Omnibat is now available from several suppliers, e g Petterson D500x or the SongMeter. For the professional the benefits of using an integrated unit vastly outweights the slightly higher price than using the common home solution of connecting a detector to a mp3 player.

Home-made monitoring equipment
A home-made auto-box basically consists of a bat detector with the time expansion system (if it is going to work with Omnibat) wired to suitable recording medium such as an mp3 player or similar. It is important that the bat detector has an automatic triggering function and that the recording medium can remain in a standby mode until it receives a signal from the detector (usually called "VOR - Voice Operated Record" or "Auto-sync".