Life Oracle
Places / bench-tolhuisweg / node

Life Node at Bench, Tolhuisweg

What the box measured and how it was doing, over time. Nothing here is modelled: every point is a post the node made. Times are local to the place (Europe/Amsterdam); the grey bands are nights. The location is shown to within 7 km.

Last heard here

the 5 most recent species, newest first
Carrion Crow
Carrion Crow
Corvus corone
8 h ago · 80% sure
Eurasian Jackdaw
Eurasian Jackdaw
Coloeus monedula
9 h ago · 84% sure
Common Magpie
Common Magpie
Pica pica
10 h ago · 54% sure
Great Bittern
Great Bittern
Botaurus stellaris
12 h ago · 96% sure
Redwing
Redwing
Turdus iliacus
12 h ago · 75% sure

Photos from Wikimedia Commons, cut out here: Carrion Crow by Alexis Lours (CC BY 4.0) · Eurasian Jackdaw by hedera.baltica from Wrocław, Poland (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Common Magpie by Alexis Lours (CC BY 4.0) · Great Bittern by Francesco Veronesi from Italy (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Redwing by Andreas Trepte (CC BY-SA 2.5)

Life index

One verdict for this place, read from three streams on one timeline. The seven readings are never summed: the weakest decides, and a stream that has not spoken yet makes the verdict insufficient, on purpose. The satellite has watched since 2019; sound and soil began when the node arrived.

Verdict · 2026-Q4Insufficient data
6 of 7 readings still unknown: autonomy, resilience, cycling, renewal, structure, diversity
Sun 13 SepThu 17 SepMon 21 SepFri 25 SepTue 29 SepSat 3 OctWed 7 OctSun 11 OctVerdictthe weakest of seven readings, per quarter2026-Q3 · insufficient2026-Q4 · insufficientSatellitegreenness (NDVI) per clear Sentinel-2 scene; shaded: growing season0.00.51.0Soundspecies heard per day (70% sure or more), the recorder in the box06Soilmoisture (area, %) and temperature (line, °C) at 10 cm, daily means0501000°25°the node arrivednow
AutonomyunknownResilienceunknownCyclingunknownRenewalunknownStructureunknownDiversityunknownProductivityrising· 100%

Satellite: 321 clear Sentinel-2 scenes since 2019, computed here from Copernicus data. Sound: species recognised in the box (BirdNET-Go); only names leave the field. Soil: moisture and temperature from the probe at 10 cm; the activity in the readout is what the weather allows soil life to do (Q10 of 2, moisture from water-filled pore space or an optimum of 30% from the soil texture); the cycling reading takes its direction from lab samples or a flux probe, not from this. Method: the spec.

Every post travels from the node to the oracle in Nuremberg; the rings run while the node is being heard. Drag to turn. Land from Natural Earth.
Last heard
5 h ago
quiet · Mon 12 Oct 18:55
Battery
12.45 V
at the Witty Pi, a few tenths under the battery
Inside the box
15.0 °C
processor 32 °C
Drawing
2.3 W
50 GB free on the card
Mobile network
Odido (T-Mobile NL)
-64 dBm · 2 posts still queued
Heard today
7 species
47 detections · 7 species this week

Heartbeats

Every post the box made. It posts three minutes after a start, every three hours after that, and once more when it switches itself off. A silence after a shutdown is sleep; a silence without one means a post went missing.

missed 2.5 daysmissed 2.3 daysasleep 10 h 34 minTue 6 OctWed 7 OctThu 8 OctFri 9 OctSat 10 OctSun 11 OctMon 12 Oct
postfirst post after a startswitching offasleepsilent53 posts · 27 starts · 6 shutdowns · 3 unplanned silences, longest 2.5 days

Soil

2 probes, read every twenty minutes and sent with the next post. On a desk a probe in the air reads 0% moisture.

Moisture, % of volume
0.050.0100.0Tue 6 OctWed 7 OctThu 8 OctFri 9 OctSat 10 OctSun 11 OctMon 12 Oct
10 cm: 0.0%30 cm: 0.0%
Temperature, °C
15.020.025.0Tue 6 OctWed 7 OctThu 8 OctFri 9 OctSat 10 OctSun 11 OctMon 12 Oct
10 cm: 12.7 °C30 cm: 12.3 °C

The box itself

From the heartbeat: the battery it runs on, how warm it is inside, and what it draws. The battery is a 12.8 V LiFePO4; under 12.0 V at rest the last tenth of the charge is left, and at 12.8 V it is comfortably back.

Battery, V
12.0012.5013.00Tue 6 OctWed 7 OctThu 8 OctFri 9 OctSat 10 OctSun 11 OctMon 12 Octlow, 12.0 Vback, 12.8 V
battery: 12.45 V
Temperature, °C
20.040.060.080.0Tue 6 OctWed 7 OctThu 8 OctFri 9 OctSat 10 OctSun 11 OctMon 12 Octthe processor slows itself down from 80 °C
in the box: 15.0 °Cprocessor: 32.1 °C
Power, W
0.002.004.00Tue 6 OctWed 7 OctThu 8 OctFri 9 OctSat 10 OctSun 11 OctMon 12 Oct
the box draws: 2.28 W

Sound

What the microphone recognised. Species recognition runs in the box; only the names leave the field. The grid is the last fourteen days by hour of the day, so a dawn chorus shows as a dark column.

0h
6h
12h
18h
Tue 29 Sep
Wed 30 Sep
Thu 1 Oct
Fri 2 Oct
Sat 3 Oct
Sun 4 Oct
Mon 5 Oct
Tue 6 Oct
Wed 7 Oct
Thu 8 Oct
Fri 9 Oct
Sat 10 Oct
Sun 11 Oct
Mon 12 Oct
Darkest cell: 30 detections in one hour. Local time.
Speciestoday7 daysallsurelast heard
Great Bittern Botaurus stellaris17171799%Mon 12 Oct 12:15
Eurasian Jackdaw Coloeus monedula15151596%Mon 12 Oct 14:39
Carrion Crow Corvus corone55587%Mon 12 Oct 15:17
Redwing Turdus iliacus55596%Mon 12 Oct 11:46
Common Magpie Pica pica33399%Mon 12 Oct 14:16
Dunnock Prunella modularis11187%Mon 12 Oct 10:52
Long-tailed Tit Aegithalos caudatus11178%Mon 12 Oct 10:45

Not counted: 46 test detections from Sat 19 Sep to Sun 11 Oct, made while the node was built. They show the box worked; they say nothing about the place.

Microphone: Life node v1, BirdNET-Go on Raspberry Pi 4, INMP441, last seen 5 h ago · Soil probe 10 cm: DFRobot SEN0600, last seen 5 h ago · Soil probe 30 cm: DFRobot SEN0600, last seen 5 h ago