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Welcome to the orcasite wiki!

History

~2002-2017: mp3 streams + Wordpress

• Hydrophone nodes used Winamp/Shoutcast plugin to generate an mp3 stream (30 seats max/node)
• Val built WhoListener (Visual Basic, then QT) to monitor noise levels and automate orca detection
• orcasound.net used Wordpress for CMS & blog

2017: Kickstarter

• Raised ~$20k
• Goal: an open source live-streaming solution and community science project that would scale to conserve orcas

2018: development of an Elixir/Phoenix web app (v1)

• Design for mobile only

2019: improved design for desktop web app (v2)

• Improved desktop UI
• Added "I hear something interesting button" for increased community scientist interaction
• Added admin UI for review of human detections

2020: design for mobile + desktop web app (v3)

• Team effort from all-volunteer UX/design group
• Discussion of how to blend live.orcasound.net and content/blog at orcasound.net

2021: development of v3

A concerted effort in 2021 included a new architecture for Orcasound, a transition to the Next.js framework, transfer of content from Wordpress site to static generation of content, and a suite of new features and APIs.

Google Summer of Code student contributions

• Dhananjay Purohit: Improved architecture and added features
• Isabella Macchiavello: static content generation

Architectural and framework strategy (Paul Cretu, lead)

Hackathon progress