Build a (very) cheap bat detector

Over the past couple of years the bat world has been turned on its head with the emergence of very cheap self-build detectors, with features previously only available on devices costing hundreds, or thousands, of pounds.

Click here for a brief history of bat detectors

The first commercially successful Bat Detectors were produced in the 1980’s, and these simple heterodyne detectors cost over a hundred pounds.

Since then, the price has gradually crept up. More advanced detectors with time expansion or full spectrum recording have been more then developed at much higher prices, costing a thousand pounds or more.

While the price of these has come down in recent years they still cost several hundreds.

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There are several types of these self build bat detectors available:

• The Pipistrelle family of detectors – Ultra Inexpensive bat detection (of all species not just pips!)
• TeensyBat diy batdetector – Advanced homebrew open source bat detector
• The Haynes/Franz detector (often rebranded) – A simple plug together design that assembles into a cardboard box.
• A Simple bat detector (old design)
  • Do tell us if you us know of any others!

For this website we will focus on the Pipistrelle family of detectors, for a couple of reasons:

• They are very, very cheap, from £8 to £20 each
• Over the past years the Somerset Bat Group have run many Bat Detector Workshops, building the Pipistrelle devices, so we have good experience of them.