Development of an Audio and Video Observation and Recording Platform for Data Collection in a Broiler Growout Environment

摘要

While sensors exist for monitoring the environmental conditions within a poultry growout house, there are currently no systems that directly use bird vocalizations or behavior to indicate the health and welfare of a flock. As part of a research effortto explore this possibility, an experimental system was designed to collect audio, video, temperature, and humidity data for the entire six-week growout cycle of a flock of broiler chickens. The system consists of a Linux-based personal computer platform, two Shure condenser microphones, four video cameras, two temperature sensors, and a relative humidity sensor. A custom software application was developed to manage, record, andcompress the data from the sensors, and it includes a graphic user interface where ammonia levels and other activities within the growout house could be logged manually. This paper describes in detail the design, configuration and operation of the integrated system along with considerations for data management and analysis. Overall the design has proven to be robust, and the operation relatively straight forward. Since the research is ongoing, the system continues to be improved for use in future data collection activities.