General Thoughts About Active (handheld) Bat Detectors Part 2 of 2

General thoughts & Considerations About Bat Detectors Part 2 of 2

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,

Or what's a heaven for?"

-Robert Browning

What happened was: Once I had The SSF BAT3, and The TeensyBat 4.1 both up and operational:

From left to right: 

SSF BAT3, TeensyBat 4.1, EM Touch 2 Pro (on Kindle tablet).

It occurred to me, that there's one detector which would "fit right in" - The EM Touch 2 Pro.

However, having reviewed The Pro 2 here once before, meant I'd have to make a nuisance of myself - by reaching out to Wildlife Acoustics again, and explaining my intentions... Luckily, they agreed to send me a loaner.

SSF BAT3, EM Touch 2 Pro, TeensyBat 4.1 kit

 

Again, the line-up consisted of: The SSF BAT3, The TeensyBay 4.1, and The Echo Meter Touch Pro 2.

Bottom line: In the end, I decided that The EM Touch 2 Pro from Wildlife Acoustics comes out the overall winner.

The fundamental reasons why are:

• Excellent performing microphone (sensitive, accurate, and good range).
• Auto ID of bat species.
• GPS tracking.
• Stores full spectrum recordings for later analysis. 
• It's as dependable as the device it's attached to (cell phone/tablet).
• Recordings of particular interest, may be accessed & sent to your laptop, for in-depth analysis (fairly quickly & easily).

Performance-wise: 

The Echo Meter Touch 2 Pro from Wildlife Acoustics provides a comfortable listening experience - Featuring the choice of listening with either: RTE (Real Time Expansion), Het (Heterodyne), or TE (Time Expansion).

Microphone sensitivity, pick-up range, and ability to produce good/clear (legible) spectrograms:

The TeensyBat 4.1 was easily the equal of The EM Touch 2 Pro; which is impressive. 

In addition, it's ability to pick-up ultrasounds off-axis was superior (to either of the other two detectors).

The TeensyBat 4.1 also has a fairly unique 'Live Time Expansion' mode - Which is interesting, as well as pleasing to monitor (via ext. speaker). Especially if you're a fan of using time expansion mode. I won't go into it here (you'll have to wait for the TeensyBat review); but I felt compelled to mention it.

Now: Having said all that - Why exactly was The EM Touch 2 Pro the clear winner?

Well, in addition to the 6 bullet points which I listed above...There is a matter of an inconvenient drawback, on the part of The TeensyBat: It cannot record bat passes unattended. Not in a neat, automatic, and orderly fashion anyway.

Explained in another way: A TeensyBat user must be ready to press the Record button when a bat pass is being picked-up, and press the button again to stop the recording. 

In other words, a user needs to continuously attend to the Record button. If not, you can easily end up with very long (and large) recordings; with bat passes being few & far-between. I don't have to further explain how frustrating this can be when you're back at your laptop.

This is in contrast to The EM Touch 2 Pro's ability to: Automatically record a bat pass, stop when the bat is gone, save it, and go back to active monitoring. 

This results in a collection of neat recordings. With those having recorded ("confirmed") bat passes being conveniently marked with the yellow bat icon, which many of us are familiar with.

So, what happened after all these tests? I remembered that there's another, excellent (USB-based) bat detector - which would be an awesome prospect for this comparison! The U384 from Pettersson - It also fits in with it's affordable price point, as well as it's wonderful performance!

The U384 - USB based Bat Detector

As I'd received it for review

(directly from Pettersson)

     

A closer look at The U384, 

   with the 

included USB adapter.

As you can tell, this topic of discussion has the potential to get out-of-hand! All I'll say at this point in time, is that I recall the excellent performance of this Pettersson unit when I reviewed it. And I firmly believe that The U384 would do very well if it were a part of this detector comparison. I may elaborate on this in the future.

As a side-note: I've been doing quite a bit of experimenting with several external ultrasonic microphones. I'll be sharing all the geeky goodness here on the blog, in the future via Pics, etc. 

Just a sneak peek for now!

😊

So...I'm looking forward to ordering myself an AudioMoth 1.2.0, in the near future. They aren't in stock/available at the time of this writing, but have patience...

*Note: The Echo Meter Touch 2 Pro's are back in stock at Wildlife Acoustics.

Also, at the time of this writing, TeensyBat 4.1 kits are also back in stock.

Spectrograms will be added to this post in the near future. As alluded to earlier: Locating bat calls to create spectrograms of (from TeensyBat recordings) has been rather time-consuming... 

Until next time,

Happy bat recording analysis!

Unless you're enjoying the unseasonably warm Winter The British Isles is having - In which case: Happy bat detecting!