Guides and documents
Everything here is also in the repository. Improve it by pull request.
- Green paper: an oracle for LifeWhy a living place needs its own way of answering, and how three cheap data streams become seven readings and one verdict.
- Specification v0.1Data model, the seven readings with their exact rules, the verdict, confidence and maturity, the API, and what is specified but not yet built.
- The kit: one box on one postLife node v1: a single solar-powered 4G box that hears (BirdNET), reads two wired soil probes and posts to the oracle. No farm network, no gateway, no WiFi. About €520 in parts, half the earlier set. Order list with suppliers, checked 2026-09-12.
- Hardware guide: what to buySound recorders, soil probes and LoRaWAN gateways available today, with prices, where to buy in Europe, and the three standard kits.
- Steward guide: from zero to seven readingsRegister a place, watch the satellite readings arrive, add a recorder and a probe, deliver the data. Step by step, with the exact commands.
- Installation protocol: sound recorderHeight, orientation, spacing, schedule and maintenance for each kit, so that recordings from different places are comparable.
- Installation protocol: soil probeDepth, position, backfill and marking for moisture and temperature probes, and the LoRaWAN join.
- Data delivery protocolsHow detections, acoustic indices and soil readings get into the oracle: direct API, The Things Stack webhook, BirdNET-Pi, AudioMoth cards, BirdWeather.
- Roles and user profilesWho does what in a life-oracle network: steward, installer, verifier, consumer, methodologist, operator, and software agents.
- APIEndpoints, authentication, and examples for reading verdicts and delivering data. Machine-readable spec at /api/v1/openapi.json.
- Satellite stream: how it is computedExactly what the oracle does with Sentinel-2 for each place, which free sources it uses, and the gotchas it handles.
- Contributing and running your own instanceRepository layout, how to run the stack, how to propose a method change, and the house rules.
- Prior art: what exists, what is newA scan of credit methodologies, scientific condition frameworks, Dutch farmland indicator sets and sensor products, checked 2026-09-12, and an honest account of which parts of this design are borrowed and which are not.
- Coupling with Restor, and the open layers behind itWhat Restor holds per site, what its APIs allow, what the terms permit, and how the oracle now pulls the useful layers straight from their open sources. Checked 2026-09-12.