> Thousands of phones sounds like a massive cell phone bill, > even with the cheaper plans overseas referred to in the > article. 10 snapshots a day adds up if you're charged a few > pennies per mms. Would be great to see some some further > elaboration on this point.

Very good question/assertion.

This is Topher, from the article. In our experience so far (Indonesia & Africa), it's been shocking how affordably we're able to operate the system, though there are caveats when it comes to having to work around local standards (to be explained in a moment).

In Indonesia, in our first pilot test in 2013, we were actually able to get SIM cards with unlimited data in retail outlets the equivalent of $2.89/month. You can see a tweet from around that time in which we're quite pleasantly surprised: https://twitter.com/RainforestCx/status/342834137163505664

The caveat in this case was that these plans are pay-as-you-go, which means that credits must be purchased each month, and applied to the number through SMS. Thus, while in the field, we had to extend our API to keep track of credits, interact with the telecom over SMS, and translate keywords in Bahasa Indonesian SMS's that were returned. When an account was running low, another device in the forest was instructed to use a top-up code from (provided by the API) to "top-up" the phone with the low-balance. This is obviously a hack to emulate what people do for each other—namely purchase credits and top up each others' accounts.

Going forward, Rainforest Connection will be looking for semi-affordable monthly plans where available, and only performing work-arounds like the one described above when absolutely necessary.

It's also worth mentioning that each phone is able to hear chainsaw noises up to a kilometer in the distance, meaning that one single phone can "protect" almost 3 square kilometers (one square mile or 300 hectares) of forest. That means that 100 square kilometers can be protected with only 30 devices, which at nearly any GSM data price point is a good value.

I'd be happy to elaborate more if you have more questions. Thanks! -Topher

Are the phones able to tell where in the protected area the sounds come from (eg. distance and radius) or can it just tell us the approximate distance?

Also you might not have to protect all the areas - if the devices are sufficiently hidden from view then people don't necessarily know where it is safe to loot, and so you end up protecting a much wider range.

Thanks for the detailed answer. Hopefully you'll get it to the point where the telecommunications companies will be willing to sponsor you and provide you with free data to make your life easier - but those hacks you cooked up are really cool.

I had no idea cellphone microphones were that sensitive btw.