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Welcome to the orcasite wiki!
- Hydrophone nodes used Winamp/Shoutcast plugin to generate an mp3 stream (30 seats max/node)
- Val built WhoListener (Visual Basic, then QT) to monitor noise levels and automate orca detection
- orcasound.net used Wordpress for CMS & blog
- Raised ~$20k
- Goal: an open source live-streaming solution and community science project that would scale to conserve orcas
- Design for mobile only (contributed by Erin in a hackathon)
- Development led by Skander Mzali and Paul Cretu
- Initiation of companion orcanode repo and strategic decision to optimize playback via ffmpeg-generated HLS segments for lossy streaming and FLAC for a lossless archive (reserving right to later/also explore DASH, and eventually FLAC in DASH)
- Improved desktop UI
- Development led by Mike Castor
- Added "I hear something interesting button" for increased community scientist interaction
- Added admin UI for review of human detections
- Team effort from all-volunteer UX/design group, led by Brendan Thatcher
- Discussion of how to blend live.orcasound.net and content/blog at orcasound.net
A concerted effort in 2021 included a new architecture for the Orcasound web app along with a suite of new features and APIs. Start of a new Orcasound.net, including start of orcahome Github repo and a Next.js framework, transfer of content from Wordpress site to a static generator.
- 4/22/22 update (lead dev Paul on Slack):
The current live site is in the v2-ui branch. The v3 redesign is in the master branch. The reason you see all the Elixir stuff is because it's still an Elixir app; I'm not removing Elixir for v3, just replacing the frontend (Next.js instead of vanilla react). The folder layout for an elixir app is that all the frontend code goes in the /assets folder. So you'll find the v2 frontend code here.
For v3, I'm planning on completely separating the frontend and backend, so I won't be using the assets folder anymore. Instead I made a folder called /ui where the new Next.js project is (link here). Eventually I want to move everything around and just have two top level folders when you open the repo: /ui and /api. I think that will help people hop in a lot more easily, without being scared away by the backend code.
Version 3 soft-launched via live.orcasound.net on November 1st, 2023, followed by a public launch in mid-November, 2023. Key new features include: dynamic map (using leaflet); new reporting/annotation interface (with whale vs vessel vs other categories); public view of report list, including 30+ second clips for playback; administrative UI leveraging the Ash framework; and a GraphiQL playground (pronounced "Graphical" per GraphiQL home.
- Dhananjay Purohit: Improved architecture and added features
- Isabella Macchiavello: static content generation
See this discussion topic for Paul's view into Orcasound architecture -- past and future -- and please share your thoughts!