{"id":1765,"date":"2015-10-19T10:28:17","date_gmt":"2015-10-19T15:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kylegabriel.com\/projects\/?p=1765"},"modified":"2019-08-30T09:06:46","modified_gmt":"2019-08-30T14:06:46","slug":"artificial-bat-cave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kylegabriel.com\/projects\/2015\/10\/artificial-bat-cave.html","title":{"rendered":"Artificial Bat Cave"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2012, the Tennessee chapter of The Nature Conservancy constructed an 80-foot, underground artificial bat cave<\/a>. This was to serve as a site for bat research in order to develop knowledge about bat white-nose syndrome<\/a> and explore potential treatment methods to help increase survivorship among bats affected by this deadly disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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An opening was constructed that permitted bats to freely enter and leave the structure, with hope bats would naturally be attracted to roost in this karst-like environment. This would require environmental conditions to be similar to a natural cave environment, which include cold temperature and high humidity. An issue faced early on in development was the humidity may be too low.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was brought on to develop a humidification system. My solution involved implementing humidity and temperature sensors throughout the length of the cave and a 300-PSI misting system that would maintain a minimum humidity of 85%. This was achieved with PID-control using the Mycodo<\/a> software I developed. I oversaw a year of this system’s operation, where humidity was successfully maintained at or above 85%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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