Monday 30 May 2011

Roger's Bat Blog: BATSCANNER by Elekon CH

Roger's Bat Blog: BATSCANNER by Elekon CH

BATSCANNER by Elekon CH


New from Elekon is the Batscanner detector, described as a 'frequency mixer' converts the echolocation to Heterodyne, this can be heard over the built in speaker or over headphones/earphones.

Simple switching is on/off and two touch buttons for up and down volume.

The display is excellent, it displays the peak frequency of the bat, therefore a Noctule passes and you get the corresponding frequency of that particular bat. 

Sound can be recorded however the recordings in heterodyne are not suitable for software analysis.
A link between the detector and Video recorder works well bat sound on your film, nice!

I would like to see a wrist strap, I have seen too many pieces of equipment dropped, normally mine dropped by other people and I am not sure about the battery compartment's cover being held by screws, I would like quick access to check how much power is left before a survey not have to unscrew the cover when on site.

The controls are a plus side, frequency read-out is very good, it is not really a commercial bat surveyors tool but a good addition to ones kit if for example using an anabat.



It is powered by three AAA batteries which are accessed via a cover on the back which is held in position by two screws. (The velcro was added by me during video sound recording)
Although this detector is not yet available it will cost about 225 Swiss francs (£160.76 // $264.79 // 185.357 Euro) plus tax and shipping.
Battery cover
Microphone


Elecon, Ltd, Cheer Strasse 16, CH-6014 Luzern
Tel +41 41 250 40 40, Fax +41 41 250 40 43, E-mail: mail@elekon.ch

Not yet in the UK but Alana Ecology are the main UK distributors for Elekon.