BCM Help Center / Knowledge Base

The bat house should be situated at least 10’ above the ground. 

Because bats need an adequate amount of warmth during the day, solar exposure is very important when setting up a bat house. However bats can also get too warm, so coordinating bat house color with your geographic location can aid in having a successful bat house. Refer to the temperature zone map located on our Four-Chamber bat house page. 

The wood thickness has something to do with it,  how many screws are used to hold it all together, and how well the bat houses have been finished (how many coats of paint used, etc.). So, material is actually not a big player in this in my opinion. True cedar may be more insect resistant, but either box will probably fall apart from normal weathering long before insect damage comes into play.

BCM pre-scratches all interior surfaces of all kits in multiple directions, so bats have the maximum ability to hold on. We do not use screen that bats can become trapped under.

The longest lasting bat houses will be the plastic shells such as the Four Chamber Premium.

There are some conflicting observations about the usefulness of pup catchers. PA Biologists observed pups never being recovered on pup catchers at all, while others have observed pups climbing back into the bat house. It probably depends how old the pups are, and the reason behind them being out. 

There is a DIY solution here: https://batworld.org/bat-house-pup-catcher/ that I like because it is adaptable to whatever bat house or roost you are having problems with. 

Note the “pup catcher” and it’s parts will deteriorate over time and should be considered something that is a temporary fixture to your problem roost.

As long as enough limbs are trimmed off so that the bat house receives direct sun most of the day (especially in the morning), that snag would be just fine. Mounting a bat house is a little trickier because the tree is round and uneven. If using our pole mount kit or something similar, attach the pole mount brackets straight and flush with each other on a flat surface using a few pieces of scrap wood. The mounts can then be lag-bolted onto the tree, and the scrap wood discarded. The two brackets should then be on the tree in the proper spacing and position for the bat house. In addition, stainless steel lag bolts should not corrode and kill the tree like other materials.

If your tree gets quite a lot of direct sun, it may be suitable. Here are some steps to help you attach the pole mount (which is two separate pieces of wood) to something round and irregular like a tree trunk:

1) Lay out the pole mount brackets square to each other with the proper spacing on a table. Test fit the bat house onto them to be sure you have them at the correct distances apart.

2) Temporarily and securely attach scrap wood to both ends of the pole mounts, so that you essentially make a rigid “frame”, which will keep the proper spacing and orientation of the pole mounts. 

3) Take this “frame” to the tree, and screw the pole mounts to the tree using stainless steel lag bolts (not included in the kit). I believe if you do not use stainless steel lag bolts you run the risk of killing the tree! That said, if the tree is not healthy, any bolting into it may kill it.

4) You should not be able to remove the scrap wood that was holding the mounts flat and parallel. If not much twisting or shifting occurred, the bat house should mate nicely with the mounts. 

The Phoenix area is rather extreme for bat roosts. 

You might try bat houses that are completely shaded. At the desert museum in Tucson, they have bats in bat houses that are under a pavilion/covered garage. Completely shaded attached to a brick wall, under a garage roof.

You might also try putting out hummingbird feeders. You will probably get nectar -feeding bats such as Mexican long-tounged bats, which are quite fascinating to watch as they hover for a split second while sipping. Normally they are pollenating agave and following the bloom cycle, but they will happily take to the feeders when in your area.

The manufacturer currently recommends Sandisk Ultra/Ultra II CF cards, or Sandisk Extreme/Extreme III CF cards. Sizes up to 32GB have been successfully tested. 

The manufacturer has tested CF card sizes up to 32GB. However, the Pettersson D500x has a total of (4) storage slots, allowing a total of 128GB of combined storage. Things like expected nightly bat activity, insect noise, recording length, and length of time between detector service checks are just a few of the main things to consider when it comes to making sure you have enough storage. As a general rule, try to stick with a single 16GB card for deployments lasting a few nights or a 32GB card for a week. You’ll have more flexibility in terms of when you’ll need to offload your data, and are usually large enough to accommodate a few busy nights of bat activity. One large card is better than 4 tiny cards; one large card will be faster to post-process.

Begin by charging your external battery. While your battery is charging it is a good idea to check to make sure your detector will power up when using internal batteries. (C or AA depending on the year your D500x was made).  If your detector powers up, the problem most likely lies in the external battery. Once charged, test your detector to see if it will power on when using the newly charged external battery. 
 
Also, we recommend having a multi-meter on hand in order to test the voltage of your external batteries. Often times if a SLA (Sealed lead-acid) 6V battery has been left alone for too long without being charged, it may have lost is ability to power your device without further maintenance. Occasionally, a neglected battery can be “resurrected” by means of a trickle charger used for small vehicle batteries. With regular use and or/maintenance, a standard 6V battery charger such as the Battery Tender brand offered by BCM is more than sufficient for keeping your batteries in top shape. 

This is highly dependent upon your record settings! Things like recording length, high insect volume, display mode, and trigger level are all things that can contribute to increased battery usage. Consider that the more often your detector wakes up to record, the more battery power is being used. How much mileage you get out of a deployment will also be influenced by whether or not you are using internal or external batteries, or solar array for power. 
 
However, it would be foolish to leave -any- bat detector unattended for more than week or so, as other factors such as spiders in the mic, cables being chewed on, etc. will disrupt the recordings.

All that aside, the "AA" batteries in the origional D500X last about 2-3 nights. The "C" batteries last for about 5-7 days in real life project use. External battery packs using "D" cells can last 10-14 days, perhaps more. External 20 aHr batteries can last a month or more. Adding a small solar panel would allow it to run indefinitely.

There are currently 10 different “USER” profiles (USER0 – USER09) that you may customize/pre-program in order to save different recording settings.  There are also 10 different “PROFILE” (PROFILE0 – PROFILE9) that may be selected as well. However the recording settings within these profiles (PROFILE0 – PROFILE9) are predefined and cannot be changed like the “USER” profiles can be. Example: If you are customizing your recording settings for “USER3” under “F1>USER PROFILES”, be sure that you have “USER3” selected before deploying your detector if you would like to use the settings you just programmed! 

While on the home screen of the detector (the first line on the home screen will indicate which user or profile is active. Ex: “USER01”), press the ENTER key. A new screen will appear that lists the “USER” or “PROFILE” number at the top, followed by a short list of settings. Hitting the left or right arrow button will allow you to navigate to different user or profile. Hit the ENTER key again to select, and you will be brought back to the home screen. 

Because the D500x is designed for bats, there are not many settings that the user needs to worry about. Edit the USER0 profile to reflect these settings:
 
SAMPLING FREQUENCY: 500 (if you desire the highest quality recordings and disk space is not an issue) or 300 (when disk space is a consideration)

PRETRIGGER=OFF

LENGTH: 4 seconds

High Pass (15kHz rolloff) filter: Y (or N if you expect bats below 15 kHz)

TRIGGER SENSITIVITY: LOW (use very low if you want only the in range bat passes. Use Medium/High/Very High if you want to record more out of range bat passes. The out of range passes will not be classified automatically by any software and are arguably of no use, since bat detectors cannot be used to provide numbers of individuals.)

Save this profile and be sure the D500x is set to the correct USER0 profile on the "ready" screen. Press ENTER and then the L/R arrow keys to change profiles. Note that USER0 is completely different from PROFILE0.

The final RECORDING SETTINGS (when you push the REC button to start the session) could be:

GAIN: 45 (possibly use 60/70/80 for whispering bats)

TRIGGER LEVEL: 160 (possibly use 120 in very quiet areas, like deserts)

INTERVAL: 0 (unless possibly you are in a high bat traffic area)Don't forget to press ENTER to start the recording session. The D500x will not turn off and on according to your TIMER settings.

Set up a USER1 profile for MANUAL recordings. (We use USER0 for the passive recordings)

For those options:

SAMPLING FREQUENCY: 500 (because if you are bothering to manually record, might as well be the highest sample rate)

PRETRIG=OFF

Length=MAN (you may have to first set Autorecord=NO before you can set this to MAN)

HP=YES (if you are somewhere)

AUTOREC: NO

TSENSE: LOW (doesn’t matter, not used in this application))

Now set your gain to whatever you want (45 is good) by tapping the L-R arrow buttons on the “ready” screen.

Switch user profiles by tapping ENTER, then the L-R arrow keys to USER1

Now when you press REC, there is about a 1 second pause, then you are recording full spectrum until you press the REC button again. Remember SonoBat likes files less than 30 seconds, and more like 5-10 seconds are much better (however, you can simply cut up the wav file later using the “save zoomed section” in SonoBat' realtime view). I do try to count silently to myself and limit to under 10 seconds in the field in order to reduce post-processing time.

After a short pause, you can hit REC again and repeat as many times as the bat is in view.
If you have the D500 with the headphone jack, get headphones with volume control, and you can hear the FD output in real time and know if the bat is in range for recording. 
If you don’t have the headphone jack version, just rubber band a heterodyne detector (I suggest the Batscanner Stereo and you’ll be able to tell if your target is left or right) to the D500 and use it to listen for bats in real time, then you know when to trigger the D500 for manual rec.

Finally, note that the file count on screen is the LAST file recorded. So, if you let a bat go and made 3 recordings of it flying around, I rubber band a notepad to the back of the D500 and note that “M0003, M0004, M0005 = MYSE” etc. etc. This is very important and makes the post processing matching up as easy as it can be.  DO NOT write down any mistakes, that is, if M0006 was a dud, I don’t write it down, and just delete those files later, only keeping the ones I specifically noted. Maybe you want to note those duds…it can be a little confusing late at night especially if you hand the detector to someone else to take over the note taking and they don’t have a clear idea how the D500 is showing you the last file recorded onscreen, etc.

The Pettersson D500x uses either AA or C type batteries, depending on the manufacture date. Unfortunately, due to the high number of variables (record time and length, sensitivity settings, screen brightness, nightly bat activity, insect noise, humidity, temperature, etc.), it’s difficult to give an all-inclusive estimate of battery life. Due to these factors, this timeframe can range anywhere from a few days, to well over a week. However, we generally recommend checking your detector at regular intervals to keep an eye on remaining battery life.  Advice that we find most useful: Don’t leave your detector unattended any longer than you can afford to lose data!

The d500x was possibly improperly shut down with more than one CF card  in it. Try booting it with 1, 2,3 then 4 cards inserted. When you have the right number that was inserted  before, it will boot up and still be in record mode. 

If the batteries died in record mode, it will still be in record mode looking for the same number of cards that was in it before. Always wake up the detector and get it out of record mode by holding down the soft power button on the keypad. Only then turn off the hard switch under the cover. Otherwise the D500x is always in record mode and may confuse the next user! 

Be sure the cards are put in the right order: top left, bottom left, top right, bottom right, in that order. Use one large card instead of many small cards to reduce your post processing time.

Similar to the question regarding expected battery life, it’s highly dependent upon how often your detector is recording. If one night’s deployment yields 2000+ recordings on Detector A, and Detector B records only 100 files, it becomes clear that Detector A is using more power to make all of those recordings, resulting in an increased demand for battery power and ultimately, less time before you will need to swap out your batteries. 

The D500 has a manufacturer recommended operating temperature range of 0° to 50°C.

100 meters (300') is currently the maximum cable length that can be used without experiencing signal loss.

Not necessarily. First determine that the microphone cable is securely attached to the detector. Likewise, ensure that the external microphone is fully connected to the cable. If this has been confirmed and your D500x is still not picking up sound, detach the microphone from the cable and plug it directly into the detector. If you can suddenly pick up sound, this would be indicative of a bad microphone cable. If the problem still persists, it may be your microphone or the mic port on your detector. If you have a spare functioning microphone, you can determine whether or not it is the microphone port. If you suspect that this is the problem, it may be time to send your detector in for repair. 

I would consider 100m to be effectively out of range of the D500X, though you may still document the presence of "some bats" at that range. 50m will let you identify high-flying "loud" bats like Hoary, Red, Free-Tailed, Silver-Hairs and Big Browns.

Of the most significant variables, species is at the top of the list. Recording in a wide open meadow with zero clutter heavily biases your sampling toward the above "loud" bats.
Next on that significance list is your detector settings: notably gain and trigger level. If you want to "reach out", crank up the gain to maximum, and lower trigger level until it is just barely above ambient noise level.

However, if you tailor recording settings to maximize your detection distance, you will most definitely lower your ability to classify those recordings. Ultrasound attenuates through the atmosphere at a different rate for different frequencies. The farther away you are from the bat, the less bandwidth and call detail you receive; you may be able to say that you've detected "a bat", but may not be able to say anything more than that. Plus, if you've cranked the gain, you will overload those rare perfect bat passes which are actually near your mic.

I suggest putting the mic on a pole, then wedge the pole between the driver-side rear door and the back seat of your vehicle. The mic should be 2’ or higher above the roof of the vehicle…not flush or sitting on top of the vehicle. You might need to use small rope to secure the pole to a luggage rack, etc. Angle the mic approximately 45°; direction probably doesn’t matter. Remove the D500x directional cone if desired. You may get better recordings with it on, but fewer recordings overall. (BTW, never, ever, use the Wildlife Acoustics directional horn on -any- microphone.)

The slower you drive your transect the more recordings you will make, and the better the recordings will be. If you are not committed to a protocol I would avoid speeds more than 10 mph. Also, point surveys -consistently- outperform mobile transects, so consider just moving to designated spots quickly and remain stationary for x-minutes, rather than constantly moving. This way you at least get usable call files for analysis rather than trashy call files that can’t be identified.

Mobile transects are probably the hardest kind of bat survey to conduct, and introduce additional layers of bias on top of an already biased survey method; good luck!

The main trick is to be sure the detector case is shaded; stick it in a bush, put some trash wood on it,  or worst case bring along something to cover it. Some have put it in a hole. If it really must be exposed, you should probably drill holes in the ammo box enclosure and spray paint it white. So far we’ve alway been able to microsite it somewhere with the case is shaded, and once found a discarded barrel or something we sheltered one in.

As for rain, all microphones left for long term should be mounted horizontal, and raised up into the airspace as high as practical. This usually is a 20’ pole lashed to a ~15’ tall shrub of some sort for support. If you have no suitable shrub to use as a pole support, a pole is slid over rebar then tied off in 3 directions will do.

Plan to service the devices about once every 8 days with the C batteries installed, though you may get twice that with the external D pack we also have. You really don’t want to leave any detector more than 10-14 days as often other issues arise with mounting, etc.

We cannot recommend going more than “quad-high” with those poles, that is, add perhaps one more 6’ pole section to each side. If your crew takes special attention with rigging guy lines, you might be able to add 2 poles to each side, giving you a total height of 36’. When the nets are collapsed, the poles will be very flimsy and will want to bend in the middle and possibly snap. (When nets are raised, additional guy lines would be placed on the white rings about 1/2 way up and would keep the poles straight well enough, but when collapsed the poles would be very unstable.)

All of the hardware and ropes on the 3H, 1H, and harp trap systems are perfectly fine to soak in hot water. If you use any chemicals, you’ll want to rinse it off as the metal may tarnish or corrode if left in storage with chemical residue on it. 

You can adjust the white ring spacing to suit by pulling the white rope thru the white rings. Depending on how much extra rope is left over below the bottom white ring, you might start at the top and adjust all of them slightly down, or move them all up, or half-and-half. You’ll probably want needle-nose pliers to help pull the rope thru the white rings, as they are intended to not move on their own and require a little force to move. 

The key features of the ATN OTS-HD 640 for bat monitoring use are:

30 Hz frame rate for smooth video of bats in flight

640x480 sensor size, which is considered high-end for a sub-$5000 device

1x lens, which is about as wide angle as these devices come. You will still need to be a fair distance from a mine entrance, for example, to capture the entire scene

Capable of external power battery pack (Thermal cameras eat AA batteries)

Records video onto a memory card (no additional hardware/cables needed)

What the device -doesn’t- do:

- Manual exposure/gain/contrast, so some situations the image is sub-par

-Displays temperatures

-Automatically NUC (reset/clear the image). This thermal camera requires the user to periodically cover the lens and “clear” the image sensor (push a button) to obtain the best image quality. How frequently depends on if the temperatures in the environment are changing and the device is cooling down/warming up. For our current project in AZ, we are setting up the cameras an hour before sunset. During recording we are clearing the image about once every hour to 90 minutes.

- The file size is limited to about 1.5 hours, then the device stops recording. You must manually start a new recording, so it can’t be left unattended forever. This could be easily fixed with a firmware update if customers complain enough (it should just close one file and start another automatically)

Go to preferences, and first select a Region, then a Subregion as appropriate. You can learn what exactly is in each region by reviewing the help info under the "?" button. 

If you do not have all of the regions you are looking for, you can download them for free, then drop them into the Data folder that is located in the SonoBat 4 NA program folder. Restart SonoBat and all those new regions are available. For example Download the Great Basin classifier here from the SonoBat website: https://sonobat.com/product/sonobat-4-gb/ under the link that says “already own?" Repeat for other regions you are interested in, downloading those small classifier files from each region.

In SonoBat 3, the workflow was that you got a results spreadsheet immediately after the analysis processing. You can still get this if "output legacy spreadsheets" is checked on the SonoBatch panel.

In SonoBat 4, the concept is more advanced. The batch process now embeds calculation results in the metadata, you only do this process once! It is not necessary to re-batch them ever again (unless you want to change the species decision threshold and call quality settings to force more classifications onto your data).

In SonoBat 4, the workflow is this:

1) SonoBatch classify a folder of files 

2) Open the SonoVet tool, and add the folder(s) to the “project”

3) Use the Vetting Table tab to edit/sort your data to suit your needs

4) Use the Export tab to export your project into a number of different formats (the "current layout" is exactly what you see on the Vetting Table, but other options like Project Summary and Night-Site Summary are useful for Indiana bat surveys. (You may want to insert a “monitoring night”  column on the Vetting Table before export if that info is useful for you.) 

There’s lots of cool things you can do in the Vetting Table, mostly accessed by right-clicking the column headers…this is how you can reveal (add) or hide columns/metadata useful for sorting. … try to read all the help tips that appear and toggle the contextual help on and off using or .

Windows 8 or higher laptop, PC, Mini PC, or tablet. 4 GB RAM + 1.5 gHz processor or higher recommended. Microsoft Surface Pro 4 128 GB, 4 GB RAM, Intel Core i5 or higher is preferred. This tablet can be found certified refurbished for some savings over new, particularly if it only to be used as a bat detector.

To view previously recorded files on SonoBatLIVE, you select the path to the folder in the “Save files to the following directory” box. Be sure you drill all the way into it and select “current folder”.
Then go to the “history” tab. Depending on how many files you have, this may take awhile to load, perhaps 10-15 seconds  for large folders.

LIVE is not an analysis/viewer program. You will see that the regular SonoBat app shows much higher resolution and of course has the full suite of tools to tease apart the signals.

The workflow basically is this: Enter all metadata and filename start in LIVE, record, open the resulting folder using the vetting table function in SonoBat, edit/vet/delete/rename/sort by species of interest files to suit using the SonoVet tool. Then export a “final” spreadsheet for use as needed in other apps.

Think of SonoBatLIVE as a capture program (though decidedly the most powerful bat capture app available); it lacks most of the features allowing you to actually tease apart a recording. The intent is to have users actually watching bat behavior during use, rather then being glued to tablet screens.

What you are trying to do is essentially batch process other files recorded elsewhere; for this you would use the main SonoBat “viewer” program and select the “Sonobatch” utility within that. After the batch process is complete (which only ever needs to be done once), use the SonoVet tool to get to the classifications, approve or reject autoID (which is where the viewing tools come in), and finally summarize in various output options depending on what your needs are. The data review and management can get pretty deep pretty fast as there are a number of very powerful processes that can be accomplished with the whole suite of the Data Wizard, SonoBatLIVE, and SonoBat. If you are starting out you might be interested in one of the workshop venues at http://www.batsurveysolutions.com where we blow the doors off the major bat software besides SonoBat.

This is most often experienced due to a lack of having the correct Windows add-on packages installed on your computer. These can be found easily and downloaded directly from the Microsoft website. The following packages are required:
 
Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5 (already included in Windows 8/8.1)
Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package for Visual Studio 2013
 
Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package for Visual Studio 2013 is available in a 32-bit (x86) and a 64-bit (x64) version. If your have a Windows 32-bits operating system, install the x86 version, if you have a 64-bit Windows version, install both the x86 and x64 versions.
 
In order to check if the software packages are installed on your computer, open the Control Panel and select >Programs (or Programs and features). This will show a list over the installed programs.
 
Make sure that your M500 is not plugged in during this time. After you have made sure your PC is up to date and has the software and appropriate packages installed, then you can plug in the M500 into the USB port.