micro Passive Acoustic Monitor (microPAM)

This web site describes the micro Passive Acoustic Monitor (microPAM).

The microPAM development was initiated due to wordwide shortages of low cost PAM systems that where provided so far to the bioacoustic community. Most of these systems where based on low-power Microcontroller (MCU) that are out of Stock at all distributers.

The microPAM was initially constrained to terrestrial application, where implementations are feasable with low cost components. In particular, the existance of digital microphones made it possible to build a PAM system with only few commercially available components. The extension of the concept to underwater application is possible if the digital microphone is replaced with digital hydrophones. Such digital hydrophones are however not (yet?) easily available, but may be constructed using piezo ceramic transducers preamplifiers and Analog Digital Converters.

As genuine digital hydrophones are typically not considered low cost devives, it may be interesting to investigate if digital microphones can be adapted to underwater applications, which should be possible for very shallow water scenarios (say < 10 m).

micro Controllers

There are a variety of micro control units (MCU) possible for implementing a microPAM system. The initial idea of a microPAM system is based on a Teensy4.1 that features an ARM Cortex M7 processor and is easy to be programmed, but in theory a less powerful ARM M0+ processor, e.g. one that is the core of Paspberry Pico (RB2040) boards could used, albeit more careful software development is required.

The microPAM is therefore (planned to be) implemented in two flavours

• microPAM-T4 based on Teensy 4.1

• microPAM-pico based on PR2040 pico processor

Development

In development is an autonomous recorder for the marine environment

• microPAM-mare

• LC-mare microPAM-mare variant for the IQOE/POGO low-cost hydrophone/recorder initiative

Note to myself:

Compile this book via “jb build –builder html ./”