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Using the D500X for manual recording
To set up the D500X for manual recording, select a profile with “AUTOREC = NO” (A = N).
To start recording, press the REC key. If a profile without pre-trig (“PRE=OFF”) is used, a
recording of the chosen length (e.g. 3 seconds if “LEN=3” was chosen) will be made. If
“LEN=MAN” was chosen in the profile, press the REC key a second time to interrupt the
recording.
If a profile with pre-trig (e.g. “PRE=1”) is used, press the REC key to start recording. The text
“BUFFERING” will be displayed until the pre-trig time has elapsed in order to fill the
memory buffer. In order to finish the recording, press the REC key again. The recording will
continue to make the total recording time equal to the chosen “LEN” value and then stop.
The Power Fail Resume function
If the power is switched off or otherwise fails while the detector is in the Automatic
Recording mode, the detector will automatically resume the recording session when power
returns.
The detector constantly monitors the battery voltage and if the voltage falls below the "shut
down" voltage (factory default 3.8 V), the detector shuts down. An attempt to restart the
detector is made every 30 seconds. In order for a restart attempt to be successful, the
measured battery voltage must exceed the "warning" level (factory defaults 4.0 V for internal
batteries and 4.7 V for external batteries). This allows the battery to recover before the
detector is allowed to resume recording, which is important e.g. if the detector is powered
from an external battery with solar panel charger. Please refer to the UTILITIES section of
this manual for information on how to change the default settings.
The battery voltage is measured after the polarity protection circuitry, which means that the
measured voltage is ca. 0.3 V lower than the actual battery voltage. Early D500Xs may not
have the polarity protection circuitry installed.
File management
After a recording session, the recorded files are usually transferred to another medium, e.g.
the hard disk of a computer, for storage and/or analysis. In order to use the same CF card for
new recordings with the D500X, the card should be formatted in Windows (as FAT32) or in
the D500X. This will erase all files from the CF card. Just deleting individual files in
Windows Explorer will not necessarily free the corresponding space on the CF card for the
D500X.
The files are “wav” files that can be used by most sound editing software. However, due to
the high sampling frequency, the files usually cannot be replayed by common sound cards.
Using special software, such as BatSound, playback at slower speed is possible with any
sound card.
The maximum number of files for a certain recording session (using 1-4 CF cards) is 64000.
