Good morning Aleksey,

Your idea is very similar to an idea I had -- I guess we are experiencing some convergent evolution.   I'd be very interested in understanding your project more.   I'd be curious to know if you've done much testing with Lora and dense foliage.  I'm just curious to know if you've hit any real limitations.  Reading your description, it sounds like perhaps you are using some mesh networking.   Anyway -- it's nice to meet you and see we had similar ideas.

Chris

Good concept and the component choices are sensible for a low-cost prototype. A few technical observations from working with similar architectures in remote African deployments:

On the ESP32 deep sleep current — the ESP32-WROOM in deep sleep draws ~10-20μA in practice, which is fine for battery life calculations, but the TP4056 charging IC has a quiescent current of ~55μA in standby. This means the charging circuit itself can dominate your sleep current if the solar panel voltage is too low to trigger charging. Worth profiling the actual system current rather than relying on datasheet deep sleep figures alone.

On the MAX9814 — it's a good low-cost choice but has a relatively high quiescent current (~3mA continuously) for a mic preamp. If you're using sound threshold waking via an interrupt, the mic circuit needs to stay powered during sleep, which significantly impacts your power budget. The ICS-43432 I2S MEMS mic combined with a hardware comparator for wake-up threshold detection is a more power-efficient alternative for this use case.

On the SX1278 LoRa mesh — the SX1278 supports raw LoRa but not LoRaWAN natively. For a mesh topology you need a protocol layer on top — Meshtastic or a custom implementation. Worth being explicit about this in the architecture, as it affects how you integrate with existing ranger communication infrastructure.

On the IP65 enclosure in African savannah — IP65 protects against dust and water jets but not against the daily thermal cycling that drives condensation inside sealed enclosures. A Gore-Tex vent membrane port is worth adding to any permanent outdoor installation.

Interesting project overall — happy to discuss the power architecture in more detail.

Hi Akio!

Is there any more extensive documentation for Loko than what I see on the website in the link you sent? I'm curious to learn more, such as what the mean and median positional errors are, and how long the battery would last at various fix intervals (such as 5 minutes fixes vs 15 minute fixes), whether the device is capable of taking more than 6,500 consecutive fixes if it is able to regularly connect to the ground device, how it handles failed fixes (i.e. there are no satellites detected), etc.

I'm working on a project in which we are deploying GPS receivers on gopher tortoises. As with many devices, one of our biggest challenges is finding a device that can store a lot of fixes so that we can leave it out for long deployments (we have been looking at devices with pure receivers, and no transmission option), and as someone else mentioned, ruggedness is very important as well- the turtles can be very hard on trackers. These animals present some unique tracking challenges because they spend much of their time underground, meaning that the device will be unable to detect satellites and/or get a good fix most of the time. We also value customizability- someone else pointed out that we biologists have been known to open up devices and DIY them for our own uses- and we are wont to do the same with software as well, if able. For example, for my study we are interested in options where we can choose an adaptive fix interval, for example, every 5 minutes but only during daylight hours, to save on battery as well as memory space. I know triggered firmware is a common request as well- various groups will use different sensors, such as light, temperature, moisture, float, accelerometer, etc. to tell a device when it's appropriate to take a fix (when the animal moves, when it surfaces, etc.).

Best,

Jocelyn

Great discussion — the trade-offs you're navigating with Loko are exactly the right ones for open-source wildlife tracking.

A few thoughts on the points raised, particularly for large animal tracking in Africa with limited budget:

On waterproofing the LoRaWAN antenna — the antenna does need to protrude or be positioned at the surface of the enclosure, but this doesn't have to compromise IP rating. A simple approach is to use a helical or meandered trace antenna on the PCB itself (no external stub needed) and cast the entire PCB in epoxy or use a conformal coating, with the enclosure providing the mechanical protection. For collar deployments on large mammals, the antenna is often routed along the collar belt itself as a flexible element, which also improves radiation pattern.

On geofencing for large animals with infrequent fixes — I'd agree with the caution raised earlier. For animals with large home ranges like elephants or lions in Africa, a 1-4 hour fix interval means an animal can travel 10-30km between fixes. Geofencing only works reliably when you can predict where the base station receiver will be relative to the animal's trajectory. For open savannah, a LoRaWAN gateway on a fixed elevated point (a termite mound, a tree, a ranger station) with 10-20km range is more practical than trying to download when the animal passes close.

On memory — 6,500 records at hourly fixes gives about 270 days of logging, which is enough for most large mammal deployments. The limiting factor in practice is usually battery rather than storage.

I work with LoRaWAN-based tracking systems and have field experience in southern Africa — happy to discuss specific deployment scenarios.

Did not make it to the conference, but this is a topic of interest. Will keep an eye out for future workshops announcements.

It looks like the hardware is reasonably priced. Can you give a sense of what the connectivity costs are?

This is a very promising result. The use of drones for detecting invasive species demonstrates strong potential for improving monitoring efficiency and accuracy. In a country like Brazil, where ecosystems are significantly affected by invasive species such as Hovenia dulcis (Japanese raisin tree) and Pinus spp., this technology could become a valuable tool for early detection and management.

What about this year? Who will be there? 

https://www.naturetechweek.com/

I am planning to be there for the Unconference and some satellite events.

Hi I am also looking for collaborators

if interested in the project let me know

we can add acoustic monotoring for bees

Hi Leonardo,

Let’s chat! I potentially have some opportunities, collaborations or even short-term employment. Send me a message. 

Hey Leonardo

I might have something. Lets chat, reach out to me at [email protected]

This looks amazing and I look forward to trying it out when I get the chance! 

Just wondering, when it comes to the AI recognitions, is there a way to "rename" the recognitions that were incorrect? 

Hey Sanne, awesome - we definitely need a consistent metadata standard for PAM.

If you haven't already, I would suggest sharing this on the Conservation Bioacoustics Slack channel and the AI for Conservation Slack channel. You would reach a lot of active users of PAM, including some folks who have worked on similar metadata efforts. 

If you're not a member of either one of those, DM me your preferred email address and I'll send you an invite!

Hello everyone,

Thank you all for your contribution!

You can read some updates about this project in this post.

Julia

For future readers, here you can find the report for this project: 

Hi @jennamkline , are you in the SCB Drones and Data Working Group? I think it would be great to have that as a topic for discussion during the next meeting! I'd be keen to hear more about this work.

@annavallery this might be of interest to you.