Hardware guide
The standard set is now a single solar 4G box: The kit: Life node v1. This page is the wider market scan behind it, and the distributed set (PUC + LoRaWAN) for places with WiFi at the field edge.
Prices were checked live on 2026-09-12 and include VAT where the shop shows it. They will drift; the repository is the place to correct them. Everything here was chosen on one criterion: install once, leave it for years, data comes out without a visit. Where that is not possible yet (offline recorders), the guide says so.
The three standard kits
| Kit | What it is | Per unit, all-in | Covers | Data path |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kit A: offline sound | AudioMoth 1.2.0 + IPX7 case + 3 AA lithium + 128 GB microSD + cable lock | about €245 | one recorder per 6 to 9 ha in open land (50 to 150 m for songbirds) | SD card swap every 6 to 8 weeks, analysed on a laptop with BirdNET-Analyzer, pushed with clients/audiomoth-birdnet-push.py |
| Kit B: connected sound | BirdWeather PUC + 5 W solar panel + pole mount; one 4G router per cluster | about €355 per unit + €120 router + €10/month SIM | same radius; continuous | On-device BirdNET; detections pulled from the BirdWeather API into the oracle every hour, or pushed from a BirdNET-Pi |
| Kit C: soil | Dragino SE01-LB (moisture, temperature, EC) + a LoRaWAN gateway shared by the area | about €121 per probe; gateway €140 to €300 once per farm or village | one probe per field at 10 cm, a second at 30 cm for deep-rooting crops | LoRaWAN → The Things Stack (free Sandbox or €1.33/month KPN) → webhook to the oracle |
A complete first installation for one farm (three fields, say 20 ha): 2× Kit B or A, 3× SE01-LB, one indoor gateway on the farmhouse window. Roughly €1,200 to €1,400 once, under €15 a month connectivity. That is under €10 per hectare per year over five years, before any satellite cost, which is zero.
Sound recorders
Offline (SD card)
| Device | Buy | Price | Rate | Power | Weather | Open |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AudioMoth 1.2.0 (Open Acoustic Devices) | Veldshop €146.85, LabMaker $99; IPX7 case €64.83 | €147 + €65 case | 8 to 384 kHz (bat-capable in principle) | 3× AA; ~9 days continuous at 48 kHz, 6 to 8 weeks on a dawn/dusk schedule | IPX7 case (there is no IP68 case; ignore claims of one) | firmware MIT, hardware CC BY 4.0 |
| Song Meter Micro 2 (Wildlife Acoustics) | Veldshop €177 | €177 | 8 to 96 kHz, not bat-capable | 4× AA, up to 280 h | IP67 hinged housing | no |
| Song Meter Mini 2 | Veldshop €593 (AA) / €712 (Li-ion) | €593 | 96 kHz | 8× AA, 530 h | IP67 | no |
| Song Meter SM5 (SM4 successor) | Veldshop €915 | €915 | 96 kHz | 11× 18650, 1,330 h, solar input | IP67, GPS; cellular module expected 2027 | no |
| Frontier Labs BAR-LT | Veldshop €699 | €699 | 96 kHz, 2 ch, GPS | 1 to 6× 18650, 100 to 600 h | rugged, lockable | no |
| Frontier Labs Solar BAR | Veldshop €935 | €935 | 96 kHz | solar, indefinite | waterproof | no |
| Titley Chorus | Veldshop €653 (+€326 ultrasonic mic) | €653 | 22 to 500 ksps | 4× AA, 300 h | IP67 | no |
Cornell's Swift is discontinued; Bugg (Imperial College) is not currently for sale and needs a 50 to 100 W solar kit because it uploads full audio. Neither is recommended today.
Connected (real-time detections, no card swap)
| Device | Buy | Price | Does | Power | Link | Data out |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BirdWeather PUC | Veldshop €289, maker $299 | €289 | BirdNET on-device (~6,000 species), GPS, environment sensors | 3× AA lithium ≈ 48 h, or USB-C from a 3 to 5 W solar panel (maker sells both) | 2.4 GHz WiFi + BLE only; in a field you need a 4G router | public GraphQL API with live subscriptions, CSV |
| BirdWeather PUC Bat Edition | Veldshop €495 | €495 | 250 kHz; bat classifier 215 species plus BirdNET | Li-ion pack included, solar via USB-C | WiFi | API, FLAC on 64 GB SD |
| Haikubox | Veldshop €277 | €277 | BirdNET in the cloud | mains USB only; maker says solar is not viable | WiFi | CSV, no public API |
| DIY BirdNET-Pi / BirdNET-Go | Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W (~€22) + USB microphone + weatherproof box + 10 to 20 W panel and battery | €150 to €250 | BirdNET locally; BirdNET-Go adds bat models (needs an ultrasonic USB mic, e.g. Dodotronic Ultramic384K €445) | Zero 2 W on a small panel | WiFi or USB LTE dongle | MQTT, webhooks, SQLite. Use clients/birdnet-pi-push.py |
There is no commercial LoRaWAN or NB-IoT recorder that ships species detections today. That remains DIY (Pi + LTE dongle) or 2027 (Wildlife Acoustics cellular module).
Ultrasonic (bats, 192 kHz and up)
| Device | Buy | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Song Meter Mini Bat 2 | Veldshop €890 (AA) / €999 (Li-ion) | €890 | 500 kHz, 50 nights per AA set, IP67; add the €96 acoustic mic stub to record birds on the same unit |
| Song Meter SM5BAT | Veldshop €1,199 | €1,199 | 500 kHz, 2 ultrasonic + 2 acoustic channels, 150 nights |
| AudioMoth at 250 to 384 kHz | as above | €212 with case | cheapest bat option; days not weeks at full rate, use triggered recording |
| PUC Bat Edition | as above | €495 | the only connected bat option under €1,000 |
Insect cameras (instead of traps)
- DIOPSIS (Faunabit, NL): camera with LED screen, 4G, Naturalis recognition model; ran at 120 sites 2021 to 2024, now in regular monitoring. Price on request: faunabit.eu.
- Insect Detect (open source, DE): OAK-1 camera + Pi Zero 2 W, solar, BOM €445 to €660, GPLv3: docs.
In the oracle design, birds and bats are the routine insect sensor; an insect camera is a good add-on for a subset of places and a fine triggered-visit instrument.
Software that turns audio into data
| Tool | Does | Licence |
|---|---|---|
| BirdNET-Analyzer | bird classifier, 6,500 species, CLI | code MIT, models CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (commercial use needs a licence from Cornell) |
| BirdNET-Go, BirdNET-Pi | 24/7 on a Pi, MQTT, webhooks | CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 |
| BattyBirdNET-Analyzer | European bats | CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 |
| BatDetect2 | bat call detection | CC BY-NC 4.0 |
| Perch 2.0 | embeddings for your own classifiers (insects, frogs, machines) | Apache-2.0 |
| scikit-maad | acoustic indices (ACI, ADI, NDSI, BI) | BSD-3 |
The licence line matters: if the oracle is ever sold as a service, the BirdNET family needs a commercial licence or a replacement. Perch and scikit-maad do not.
Soil probes
Recommended: LoRaWAN moisture + temperature (+ EC)
| Device | Buy (EU) | Price | Measures | Battery | Rating | Decoder |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dragino SE01-LB (LSE01 successor) | Antratek €120.94, maker $146.50 | €121 | VWC 0 to 100% (±3% below 53%), temp ±0.3 °C, EC 0 to 20,000 µS/cm | 8,500 mAh Li-SOCl2, up to 5 years | IP66 box, epoxy probe | in The Things Stack device repository; fields water_SOIL, temp_SOIL, conduct_SOIL |
| Dragino SE01-LS (solar) | Antratek €109.95 excl. | €133 | same | solar + battery | IP66 | same |
| Seeed SenseCAP S2105 | Antratek €175.09, maker $146 | €175 | VWC ±3%, temp ±0.5 °C, EC 0 to 23 dS/m | 19 Ah D-cell, replaceable, "up to 10 years" | IP66 | Seeed decoder; messages[].measurementId 4102 temp, 4103 VWC, 4108 EC |
| Seeed SenseCAP S2104 | maker $135.50 | €125 | VWC + temp, no EC | same | IP66 | same |
| Milesight EM500-SMTC | Industry-Electronics €456.79 | €457 | VWC ±2%, temp ±0.5 °C, EC ±3% | 19 Ah, up to 10 years | IP67 box, IP68 probe | GPL-3.0 decoders; humidity, temperature, conductivity |
| Truebner SMT100 + Dragino SDI-12-LB | SMT100 €149 to €158 + SDI-12-LB €54.95 | €205 | TDT (works in clay, EC-insensitive), VWC ±3% factory / ±1% soil-specific, temp ±0.2 °C | 8,500 mAh | potted sensor | generic SDI-12 payload, set a mapping |
| METER TEROS 12 + Decentlab DL-TRS12 | iot-shop €1,218 | €1,218 | research-grade VWC ±0.03, temp ±0.3 °C, EC ±5% | 2× C alkaline, 4 to 16 years | IP66/67 node, IP68 sensor | MIT decoders, in TTN repository |
| Sensoterra Single Depth (NL) | iot-shop €543.71, often quote-only | €544 + €12 to €30/year cloud | VWC only (no temp), hammer-in, 15/30/60/90 cm | 6 to 10 years, non-replaceable | IP67 | closed payload; must route through Sensoterra's API |
For the oracle's Cycling reading you need temperature and moisture together, so the Sensoterra (no temperature) and the cheap analog probes (Pino-Tech SoilWatch 10 €21 to €28, Ecowitt WH51 €20 to €27 with WiFi gateway, Catnip €12 open hardware) are second choices: fine as extra witnesses, not as the one probe per field.
Soil CO2 (flux) is not in the standard kit
Purpose-built flux instruments (Eosense eosFD, LI-COR LI-8250) are quote-only research equipment, mains or large solar, with moving parts or annual membrane changes. No LoRaWAN buried CO2 probe exists as a product; the one long field trial of buried Seeed CO2 nodes saw 20 units fall to 1 survivor in four years (humidity). The oracle therefore derives soil breathing from moisture and temperature (a Q10 model, see the specification) and treats any CO2 probe as an optional extra witness or a triggered-visit instrument. If you want one anyway, the honest budget route is a Sensirion SCD30 in a membrane housing with desiccant (~$60 module) as published in Nguyen and Levintal 2025 (doi 10.5194/soil-11-639-2025).
LoRaWAN gateways and networks
Check ttnmapper.org first: if a community gateway already covers the fields, you need none.
| Gateway | Price | Where | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seeed SenseCAP M2 | Antratek €120.94 | indoor, window | Ethernet + WiFi; cheapest TTN-ready; outdoor enclosure €53 |
| Dragino LPS8N | Antratek €169.34 | indoor | Ethernet + WiFi; 4G variant €242 |
| Dragino DLOS8N | Antratek €302.44 | outdoor IP65 | PoE; vendor range "up to 5 km" |
| MikroTik wAP LR8G kit | Reichelt €139.95 | outdoor IP54 | passive PoE, GPS; UDP forwarder only |
| RAK7268V2 | iot-shop €273.58 | indoor | Basic Station; LTE variant |
| Milesight UG67 | iot-shop €942 | outdoor IP67 | 4G, "15 km rural" |
On flat farmland expect 3 to 8 km from a mast-mounted outdoor gateway, 1 to 2 km from an indoor one behind glass.
Network server. The Things Stack Sandbox is free for small, non-commercial use (fair use: 30 s uplink airtime per device per day, plenty for a probe sending every 15 to 30 minutes at SF7 to SF9). The Things Stack Cloud Discovery tier is free for 10 devices with an SLA; Standard is €190/month for 1,000 devices. In the Netherlands KPN LoRa is nationwide: Explorer plan €1.33/month per device, monthly cancellable, devices must be on KPN's qualified list. Helium costs about $0.00001 per uplink but has no roaming with TTN and needs its own network server.
NB-IoT alternative where there is no LoRaWAN: Dragino SE01-NB (€133 at Antratek) with a 1NCE SIM (€12 for ten years, 500 MB).
Where to buy
- Veldshop.nl (NL): all acoustic recorders above, same-day shipping across the EU.
- LabMaker (Berlin): Open Acoustic Devices' EU distributor (AudioMoth, µMoth, HydroMoth).
- Antratek.nl (NL): Dragino full line, Seeed SenseCAP, gateways.
- iot-shop.de (DE): broadest LoRaWAN range: Dragino, RAK, Milesight, Kerlink, Decentlab, Sensoterra.
- Reichelt.de (DE): MikroTik, Milesight, RAK gateways.
- OpenSprinklerShop.de (DE): Truebner SMT100/SMT50 and a ready LoRaWAN SMT100 node from €99.
UK shops (Wildcare, NHBS, Connected Things) add import VAT and duty for EU buyers since Brexit.
Not verified, open
Bugg v4 pricing and availability; Swift successor "Magpie" timing; DIOPSIS price; Sensoterra's two conflicting subscription prices; Milesight's soil-type presets; independent multi-year corrosion reports for the budget probes. If you know, edit this page.