I've spent the last two years building custom field apps for Nature Seychelles on Cousin Island Special Reserve, a tiny granitic island with unreliable mobile coverage and spotty wifi signal, no fibre, and weather that doesn't care about your deployment timeline. I wanted to share what I've learned about connectivity challenges and hear how others are handling similar situations.

The problem

Cousin Island has patchy mobile signal at best, dead zones and a spotty wi-fi signal in buildings. Conservation staff need to collect data daily across 11 monitoring modules (turtle patrols, seabird censuses, invasive species tracking, etc.) and that data needs to eventually reach a cloud database. Paper forms worked for decades but the NGO wanted real-time analytics, automated reporting, and to stop losing data to rain, bad handwriting, and human error.

What I did

I built ARM as an offline-first app (Ionic/Angular/Capacitor on rugged tablets, Supabase backend). Everything works without a connection. Data is stored locally and automatically syncs when signal appears. For the Aldabra giant tortoise tracking system I designed, I went a completely different route: a LoRaWAN gateway (RAK7289) on the island picking up GPS pings from trackers on tortoises, no phone network needed at all.

Two very different connectivity strategies for the same island, depending on the use case.

What worked

Offline-first with background sync solved 90% of the data collection problem. Staff collect data all day and the app syncs quietly whenever it catches signal. LoRaWAN gave us 24/7 automated tracking with zero human input, perfect for a small team that can't afford to spend time on manual GPS reads. The LoRaWAN gateway has however limited range because of the dense canopy on the island, so tortoises wander out of reach regularly. The trick was picking GPS trackers that store data locally when they're out of range. The gateway broadcasts a collection signal twice a day, and whenever a tortoise wanders back within range, all its stored GPS points get pulled in automatically. No warden involvement, no lost data, just patience and slow tortoises eventually coming home.

What I'd love to hear from you

How are you handling connectivity on your sites? I'm especially curious about:

• Other experiences with LoRaWAN or similar LPWAN tech for wildlife monitoring
• Creative sync strategies for apps that need to work days or weeks without any connection
• Satellite options (Iridium, Swarm, etc.) for sites where even mobile signal is a dream

Looking forward to hearing what's working out there ! :)