Mothbox now available as a kit in the UK and EU!

Starting today, LabCrafter is selling the Mothbox, an open-source insect monitor, as a kit in the UK and EU. It's a light trap that runs unattended, photographing every moth that lands on it so you can count and identify what's flying in your patch of the world.

Deep in the jungles of Panama there is a group of researchers at Digital Naturalism Laboratories that build open-source hardware to monitor biodiversity. Andy and Kit Quitmeyer have been working with Hubert Szczygieł to develop the Mothbox automated insect monitoring system.

The Mothbox is a Raspberry Pi-based light trap, with a 64MP (!) camera taking photos of moths and other insects landing on its felt target, attracted by up to three LED lights called Mothbeams. A camera with 64 megapixels is necessary to capture all the little details of small moths landing on the target. The first iteration of the Mothbox was designed all the way back in 2022, and more recently the team developed a Pro version with custom electronics and a 3D-printed enclosure that makes it a bit easier to assemble.

I met up with Andy Quitmeyer at the Open Hardware Summit in Edinburgh last year, and we discussed having the Mothbox manufactured by the Open Science Shop. The Open Science Shop is a globally distributed network of open science hardware vendors (of which LabCrafter is a member), spun out from the Gathering of Open Science Hardware (GOSH). Bri Johns, who used to be a community coordinator at GOSH, also worked with the Mothbox team as a Fulbright Student Researcher, and was able to help start coordinating meetings between the Mothbox team and the Open Science Shop network.

We finally have all the bits and pieces in place to be able to offer kits in the UK and EU to build a Mothbox Pro yourself!