Echo Meter Touch Bat Detector Reviews

by Captandy

Stupid app to consider unless you have hundreds of dollars to throw away.

by Kantoskan

Been using this for ages with my echometer touch. From way back when EchoMeterTouchBatDetector cost 200 dollars. The latest version no longer works on any of my devices. It just continuously stutters. Support has given no help even though my hardware is listed as being supported. The only response from support I received was to never update my iPad or iPod touch. Very disappointed.

by Naa9593

The updates have made this terrible. It’s picking up insect calls and not working like it did before. So disappointing because I used to really enjoy it.

by BarbM89

The last few weeks I have had hours of background recordings with very few bat signatures. Last night had basically 1 hour and 45 minutes of continuous background recordings with only two identified bat calls. The only reason quit recording is because device ran out of memory. Can I uninstall the recent updates?

by RobsterMobsterTheLobster

What a great idea and innovation. The suggested ID based on different chirp signatures is amazing. However, it says for North America, there are only seven bats that do not have classifiers. However, when I plug in my home state (Florida) I count 29 species that do not have classifiers. Please correct!

by One Of The Boys

For the money required to play, this is only ok. Enjoy the bat info but gps tracks are unreliable/hit-miss(with updates it has gotten better). Understand technology is difficult to identify bats so I don’t fault app too much for Floridian bats in California. App/hardware just seems finicky in my opinion. I can’t simply “plug n play” reliably, something just goes wrong more often than not, especially with extension cord and/or extension piece required because of phone case. Will continue to use as I have already invested in the hardware, but I do hope continued updates improve performance. ‘Free’ analytical software for computer was not worth the effort required to set up (I’m not too computer savvy so I deleted it.)

If you have some extra money and enjoy the wonders of Mother Nature, check this system out.

by Wilson476

App looks promising but you can’t even try it out without buying their $200 microphone.
I wish they would add a feature to use the built in iPhone microphone instead.
It obviously doesn’t have the same frequency range but would allow someone to play around with it before making a large investment.

by Lml100

We bought the echo-meter 2 ultrasonic mike and downloaded EchoMeterTouchBatDetector. It’s been a lot of fun listening to the bats, but a bit frustrating in a number of ways. So a 4-star review, but they should fix the code.
1. This isn’t their fault, but on an iPhone you can’t use anything audio at the same time as EchoMeterTouchBatDetector so e.g. no headphones of Bluetooth speakers. This would be OK, except that:
2. The echo-meter appears to pick up output from the speaker (why isn’t it either cancelled in software, or given a setting to block everything below e.g. 15 kHz?). The result is low-frequency “echoes” of the bat signals. At least, I think that that’s what’s going on.
3. There’s no way to get EchoMeterTouchBatDetector to show you what it thinks that the species sonograms are. The code apparently uses a clustering algorithm, so it could display the characteristic patterns that it’s looking for. Why would you do that on EchoMeterTouchBatDetector not a computer you might ask:
4. While you can download your recordings, the free version of your application that they recommend (kaleidoscope) is less capable than the iOS app and has no ability to ID bats. For a $170 piece of kit that’s really annoying. I can see why they don’t give a full pro license, but a version that’s as good as EchoMeterTouchBatDetector would be reasonable and appreciated. Oh, and Kaleidoscope can’t display the GPS info either (I could probably do that myself as the metadata is transferred), and it sorts incorrectly. And doesn’t read all the fields in the csv files (maybe the pro version does???)

by Positive Dog

What fun this is! Easy to get started but also provides advanced features.

by NatalieDowne

I adore my new Bat Detector! I already found some bats! Can't wait to get back outdoors again and find more!!!

by $medthyme

This is an awesome device & I highly recommend it. I’ve been interested in bats for a long time & this is so educational! It’s so cool to show off to family & friends from my travels. My fave feature is the i.d. part where you put in the state your located & the different types are listed. Definitely worth the price & so fun to use:)