Advice on sheep GPS beacon

[jitter]

I'm curious about why you need to do this. Do you want to track the movement of the sheep each day? Or do you just want to find them after they have been grazing for 3 months?

Mostly its finding them again after they've been grazing for 3 months. During past years we could spend up to 1 month locating them all (mostly due to the large area and the big movement of the sheep going back and forth without leaving much trace). But when that said, it would also be nice to be able to monitor them now and then if thats possible without too much complications.

I'm wondering... do the sheep move about that large area as a herd/group, or do they scatter?

If it's the former, wouldn't you only need a couple of beacons rather than one per sheep?

[Marco]

The battery is something that needs to last for 3 months, so as user Macbeth talked about as well, the GPS (sheep node) would only need to send coordinated now and then. So active sleep mode would be needed for the battery to last I guess.

Maybe on the ublox that would be enough ... but a lot of GPS units have to be power gated to go low enough in power consumption.

[nfmax]

And nobody has yet mentioned the difficulty of keeping the location devices attached to the sheep - though you probably don't have the thorn hedges and brambles we have round here. Sheep will spot and get through the most implausible-looking opening - it must be the only type of intelligence they posess. Great fun trying to chase them out of the garden when they do find a way in, though!

[Marco]

What I find amazing about this thread, is that if a 750 mW GPRS cell phone wont uplink, is that none of you have suggested working the Friis Equation to determine what WILL have a good link budget.
Hint, its most likely low band VHF, or HF.

He seems satisfied with just getting locations while being on the plot, and LoRA and similar ultra-narrowband devices can do that.

If he does want to get data off the plot without being there, I'll suggest a base station for the third time. A simple high gain antenna towards the nearest cell phone tower should be enough to make a reliable connection. No HAM license required.

[FreddyVictor]

And nobody has yet mentioned the difficulty of keeping the location devices attached to the sheep - though you probably don't have the thorn hedges and brambles we have round here. Sheep will spot and get through the most implausible-looking opening - it must be the only type of intelligence they posess. Great fun trying to chase them out of the garden when they do find a way in, though!

maybe some hints from this http://blog.particle.io/2016/04/01/cation/ 

[haurs]

I'm wondering... do the sheep move about that large area as a herd/group, or do they scatter?

If it's the former, wouldn't you only need a couple of beacons rather than one per sheep?

Well actually no. I don't think they like each other that much, so they tend to go solo with their newborn children Spreding across the whole area looking for the best area to graze.

[haurs]

What I find amazing about this thread, is that if a 750 mW GPRS cell phone wont uplink, is that none of you have suggested working the Friis Equation to determine what WILL have a good link budget.
Hint, its most likely low band VHF, or HF.

Steve

Mhmm, I was wondering about using something based around the PMR/FRS UHF bands, small antenna, cheap parts and a proven technology, I *think* it's legal to use data modes like packet on PMR446 and it'd be a simple thing to have them wake up, grab a GPS location packet, transmit for a few seconds and then sleep.

Well I was thinking this might get too complicated, but maybe I'm the one complicating things too much. I thought by just relaying on something like LoRa this wouldn't be too difficult to do - since its low in battery usage and should already covers most of the area by its range.

What I find amazing about this thread, is that if a 750 mW GPRS cell phone wont uplink, is that none of you have suggested working the Friis Equation to determine what WILL have a good link budget.
Hint, its most likely low band VHF, or HF.

He seems satisfied with just getting locations while being on the plot, and LoRA and similar ultra-narrowband devices can do that.

If he does want to get data off the plot without being there, I'll suggest a base station for the third time. A simple high gain antenna towards the nearest cell phone tower should be enough to make a reliable connection. No HAM license required.

Like I wrote above, I thought it would be too complicated, thats why I said to get data while being on the plot seems easier todo. However if you guys think otherwise, I'm open for this suggestion.

Speaking of suggestions, when it comes to the high gain antenna, it might work, but I'm not sure it would work for the whole area - since its quote huge to cover by one antenna with mountains and valleys here and there. We've seen how difficult it can get for a mobile signal to pass though. It might work in one area, but then totally blank in another.

In addition this is a public area, so I'm not allowed to setup a big antenna anywhere. So thats why I'm "hitting" the drone device so much, since it seems easier to just fly up scan the area and get the positions. Then move to the next area one at a time (I can't imagine we could cover the whole area by just one scan, thats why I'm dividing the whole area into several piece just to make sure we get them all).

So to make this a bit more complicated, would it be possible to combine both these systems - get data off the plot without being there, but also use LoRa to scan the areas with bad signals?

[haurs]

And nobody has yet mentioned the difficulty of keeping the location devices attached to the sheep - though you probably don't have the thorn hedges and brambles we have round here. Sheep will spot and get through the most implausible-looking opening - it must be the only type of intelligence they posess. Great fun trying to chase them out of the garden when they do find a way in, though!

Sounds like you're speaking of experience They sure can be a hard to catch, but you should try goats!! 

Anyway, this will be the next thing to figur out. Has to be a good collar system with the tracker attached on top to get the best signals. Fun stuff!

[electosleepy]

Is a GPS transmitter on all your sheep be the best solution? Would you be able to use a drone with a camera to find your sheep?

[haurs]

Is a GPS transmitter on all your sheep be the best solution? Would you be able to use a drone with a camera to find your sheep?

Sure, the drone got a camera as well, but covering the whole area would take too much time. Specially when the battery only lasts for 25-20 minutes of flight time. So therefor the sheep needs to "tell" where they are, so we could pickup the locations.

[lincoln]

If I may, Ublox make nice receivers but they are very proud of them. (expensive) A good option would be to some thing like a GMM-u2p form Gtop. The have other modules with the antenna included and run 20$ in low volume. We use them in a timing application where the customer doesn't want to pay for a premium timing receiver.

[Koen]

We moved from GlobalTop to uBlox because once contacted by an uBlox salesperson, the price difference between both became negligible.

Some companies on AliExpress like VKel offer uBlox (and others) compatible modules. Same footprint, same chip, same circuit, different discretes and around 10 USD per piece for a quantity of 1.

[Spikee]

use cc1310 with the sensor controller and boost the rf output to 1W or so.
Ultra low power, compact and does your job.
I have recently made such device for a client which is 25x20x5mm with this chip, ladybird gps, chip antenna, dcdc , cc1310, uv light monitor , temperature and humidity monitor, eeprom , accelorometer. which is being used to track endangered animals. The energy consumption is very low because all the sensors / gps only get enabled if needed. Otherwise the power is just cut off. The energy consumption is very low because the device only sends once a day and is asleep the rest of the time / in RF receive interrupt mode. Without doing anything else than using the easiest power saving mode Task_sleep()

For long range a decent wire antenna is needed with RF power amp / lna.

Due to obvious reasons I can't show a picture

If you trow away the chip antenna than the device can be as large as the gps (20x20x5 mm)

[LaserSteve]

Sheep, Goats, almost easy....

Try Cats!



Seriously,


If I knew I had enough battery, I'd be using a Packet style transponder with Slotted Aloha, ie timeslots... Each sheep can repeat the nearby sheep's location, acting as a repeater...  At round-up time if interrogated.  Otherwise I'd just use a simple tracker.

Odds are you will need at least a watt, and a quarter or half wave antenna wrapped around the collar.  Sheep are not very tall, so to get coverage, your receive or interrogator antenna needs to be high up.

 Do you have a friend with a private airplane?  That would make life easy...

Now for the bad news, wet, tall, grass adsorbs 2.4 Ghz... 

if you can go with VHF or UHF, there are tiny  modules on Ebay that are the two watt core used in Baofeng radios, with  select-able power output, a data input, audio input, and programmable frequency..  I'll see if I can find the Auction, they were 18$ a unit.  They can reach the 173 Mhz that is used in some regions of Europe for data bursts, or UHF PMR frequencies.  The downside is they are power hogs in receive.

In most nations, you can have a watt at UHF, provided its a burst of no more then 7-15 seconds...

Too baaaad this is so pricey:

http://www.findmespot.com/en/index.php?cid=103



Steve

[Marco]

In most nations, you can have a watt at UHF, provided its a burst of no more then 7-15 seconds...

What's the point of using stone age tech with that much power when ultra-narrow-band can have the same power/Hz? It's not like you need the bandwidth.

[LaserSteve]

Stone age works when processing gain doesn't, due to lack of sync signals.   
Spread spectrum or Narrowband is great, but it has its downsides when all you have is battery for bursts.
If the RX misses the Gold or Barker code, your screwed.

Besides, with stone age, I can get a bearing very easily with a 2 antenna "phase switching " direction finder which costs 40$ to build, and/or a sound card on the laptop.

I don't have much faith in GPS, I' tend to go with K.I.S.S...

Of course this guy has done miracles with  WSPR...

http://qrp-labs.com/ultimate3/ve3kcl-balloons/ve3kcl-s9.html


Steve

[Back2Volts]

A couple of days ago I watched a nature TV documentary (NOVA ?) about the importance of connecting ways or paths between reserve parks, for the animals to move from park to park and keep the gene pool alive.    For the studies they put collars on animals (bears, elefants...)  with a system to report location just once per hour.    Most of the time the device must be in suspend mode to extend the life of the collar to two years.   Some bears were tracked from Canada over to the US for hundreds of miles and the elephants in Africa over many nations.   

I think they also do the same with the wolf reintroduction program in Yellowstone.

What about getting in touch with one of these biology projects ?   

       

[haurs]

A couple of days ago I watched a nature TV documentary (NOVA ?) about the importance of connecting ways or paths between reserve parks, for the animals to move from park to park and keep the gene pool alive.    For the studies they put collars on animals (bears, elefants...)  with a system to report location just once per hour.    Most of the time the device must be in suspend mode to extend the life of the collar to two years.   Some bears were tracked from Canada over to the US for hundreds of miles and the elephants in Africa over many nations.   

I think they also do the same with the wolf reintroduction program in Yellowstone.

What about getting in touch with one of these biology projects ?

Do you happen to remember any names, or maybe I can find the documentary online? Might be worth looking up!

[Fungus]

you could look into TI sub 1 ghz power stuff. very long range with little power consumption. I think they have a 12 mile demo on YouTube. runs on 433 or 868 MHz and other licensed or license free bands -  as far as I remember.

http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/wireless_connectivity/sub-1_ghz/overview.page

CC1310: 114km range and a 20-year battery life.

Impressive.

[kaz911]

you could look into TI sub 1 ghz power stuff. very long range with little power consumption. I think they have a 12 mile demo on YouTube. runs on 433 or 868 MHz and other licensed or license free bands -  as far as I remember.

http://www.ti.com/lsds/ti/wireless_connectivity/sub-1_ghz/overview.page

CC1310: 114km range and a 20-year battery life.

Impressive.

yes - but line of sight but still very impressive. the CC131x and CC26xx are rather cool devices ARM, Wireless and "ultra low power" input processor to determine if you want to wake up main processor or not. Neat and on my bench right now.....

LoRaWan might be a great standard - but their business polices are "If you have money and donate $50k a year" you can vote and participate in the big things.... You can get doc's for free but everything else starts at $3k / year. I find these "extortion" scheme "standards" a pain in the backside.

[Psi]

Has anyone asked the sheep what they think?

[Fungus]

Has anyone asked the sheep what they think?

I always thought sheep went around in groups.

Mid you, three months is plenty of time for them to lose each other. They're not the smartest animals.

[Back2Volts]

A couple of days ago I watched a nature TV documentary (NOVA ?) about the importance of connecting ways or paths between reserve parks, for the animals to move from park to park and keep the gene pool alive.    For the studies they put collars on animals (bears, elefants...)  with a system to report location just once per hour.    Most of the time the device must be in suspend mode to extend the life of the collar to two years.   Some bears were tracked from Canada over to the US for hundreds of miles and the elephants in Africa over many nations.   

I think they also do the same with the wolf reintroduction program in Yellowstone.

What about getting in touch with one of these biology projects ?

Do you happen to remember any names, or maybe I can find the documentary online? Might be worth looking up!

NOVA "Wild ways"   Episode 53:22      http://www.pbs.org/show/nova/

[mark03]

CC1310: 114km range and a 20-year battery life.

Impressive.

yes - but line of sight but still very impressive. the CC131x and CC26xx are rather cool devices ARM, Wireless and "ultra low power" input processor to determine if you want to wake up main processor or not. Neat and on my bench right now.....

LoRaWan might be a great standard - but their business polices are "If you have money and donate $50k a year" you can vote and participate in the big things.... You can get doc's for free but everything else starts at $3k / year. I find these "extortion" scheme "standards" a pain in the backside.

CC131x look great and I hope to play with it eventually, but they are just as closed as the Lora stuff, only in a different way.  With Lora the technology is mostly documented but you have to buy the magic hardware from a handful of approved suppliers, or go full SDR which isn't really practical for an IoT node.  With CC131x you get nice performance on a variety of generic/vanilla modulation types, but you don't get low-level control of the radio (which might let a clever engineer *implement* Lora).  They even dedicated a separate CM0 core to drive the radio, but it only runs TI-approved code---engineers not welcome.  I suspect this is the radio analog of "GPU hell", which is to say, no one will disclose the low-level interfaces to their chips because doing so might give away some competitive IP 

[tautech]

Has anyone asked the sheep what they think?

I always thought sheep went around in groups.

They often mob up to socialise but not so much when they've got young lambs at foot as the OP has mentioned.

Given no restraints they'll spread for miles.

(Sheep farming background as a kid)