Group

Biologging / Feed

Real-time tracking of animal movements is enabling more effective and efficient wildlife monitoring for management, security, and research. As devices get smaller and prices drop, the possibilities for using biologging on a larger scale have grown, and so have the possibilities for increasing customisation to meet specific research needs. Likewise, real-time tracking of illegal wildlife trade, timber, and fish products as they move from source to consumer can shed light on trafficking routes and actors, as well as support enforcement, making tracking gear a powerful tool beyond the field.

event

Tech Tutors: Review Session

WILDLABS Team
Missing Tech Tutors? Us too! Catch up on every episode from Season 1, check out some of our community highlights, and find out what we loved most about launching this series in this mid-week Tech Tutors review session....

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discussion

Satellite tags for marine turtle recommendations

Hello, Anyone out there recommend satellite tags for marine turtles? Am looking for the usual qualities - location precision, long battery life, and low cost. Tags will...

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Hi @aponzo 

Many thanks for getting in touch. One of the key uses of the Developer's Kit is to develop Argos tags for sea turtle conservation and general Argos-enabled biologgers.

The kits all sold out within about 2 weeks after pre-order sales, however we are moving forward and manufacturing another larger batch.

To form a tag the encapsulation and physical enclosure design itself is quite important so it would be good to start to share designs here too and help to achieve the quality needed (salt water switch position, antenna orientiation and type etc) so if you are interested I'd be happy to start that process, maybe via Slack or Discord.

Kind regards,

Alasdair

 

Hi @Alasdair 
Thanks a million.
It'll be great to give a look at your casing and design and see what material I can get over here, and agree it will be great to see how different people are integrating Horizon.
Just wondering if through the Arribada project directly or Groupget you will be able eventually to send out final products?
I saw the photos of some of the PitStop Turtle Tags case and they look great.
I will drop you an email as interested in the acoustic tag applicator for the sharks and the Pitstop tag.
Thanks again 
Ale

Hi @aponzo 

Take a look at the Woods Hole Group newsletter this month. They are giving away some Developer Kits - https://mailchi.mp/1e130f609ed2/august2020?fbclid=IwAR1JqkGNBYDnYvsVgWx2A2ciMcrzzRMtG7ZMsiQvnLqYYF55W2PWJAiwClk

"The goal of the project is to have a database of open-sourced Argos tags accessible for all existing and new users. To get there, we will award grants to those interested in developing on the open-source platform. "

You may want to register your interest if you're wanting to do the same.

All the best,

Alasdair

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funding

Argos Satellite Tag Open-Source Grant

Thomas Gray
WILDLABS community member Thomas Gray from Argos has given us a preview of an upcoming grant program to develop open-source tags. Three years ago, Argos worked with the Arribada Initiative to develop an open-source...

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discussion

ElephantEdge -Building the World’s Most Advanced Elephant Tracker

Hi all,  I think that anyone keen on creating awesome sensors will be interested in this contest! Check out the information below: Hackster.io, Smart Parks, and...

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Hi everyone, 

If you want to find out more, join Adam Benzion, co-founder of Hackster.io, @Tim+van+Dam , co-founder of Smart Parks, @smaston Founder of Project 15 at Microsoft, and Rex St John from Arm  today 9am PST for a livestream to talk about the #ElephantEdge Hackathon.

They'll be talking about how this collaboration came to be, how to get involved, and how developers and makers can get involved to unlock challenges facing our Earth and help the scientific community advance in their projects by contributing our technology skills to these efforts.

Join here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dOaHrtlMec

Steph

Hi Everyone, I'm Anthony Lindley, a PhD candidate at the University of Southampton. I mainly work with computer vision but would like to branch out and try other ML applications.

I love elephants and having only recently got to grips with the scale of the threat to their existance, feel very strongly about this competition! I'm really keen to meet other people who'd potentially be up for collaborating with me or forming a team. Please contact me on twitter at @ajwl27 and we can come up with a plan!

 

Really looking forward to the solutions everyone comes up with here and of course, I hope that this actually makes an impact in the wild and helps protect these beautiful animals.

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discussion

Tracking via Starlink

Hi, I was wondering if any has heard anything (or has ideas) about using Musk's Starlink for wildlife tracking? Thanks, -harold

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It sounds interesting. I've been trying to find coverage maps for Starlink but so far, I haven't found any actual coverage maps. I seem to just find "planned" coverage maps. It's hard to see how these would get used for wildlife tracking at this moment. The initial devices will use an antenna that's 0.5 meters in diameter which for me, would be approximately from the base of my foot to my knee. 

I think power consumption and coverage will also be main factors if the system gets used. Based on other satellite communications designs, the system would have to be pretty large by animal tag standards, even without the antenna, due to the batteries required to handle the maximal current. It would be interesting to test out some modules for this technology, though.

FYI for whoever's interested, you can sign up to be a potential beta user. More info here.

Akiba

This is something I was thinking about recently as well. It is my understanding that the reciever antennas are fairly large. I think, however, there will be some very interesting things that can be done with starlink. If you could do your tracking with some type of antenna network and send the data to the reciever then star link gives you a high speed connection with which you could do near real time data processing.

Hi all,

Starlink is Ku and Ka-band as they are targetting broadband, so you're looking at similar large(ish) transmit / receive dishes as traditonal VSAT, and they will POE-based so lots of power required for the links. Kineis (Argos), Lacuna, Iridium and ICARUS are the main contenders in my eyes over the next 5+ years.

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funding

Challenge: ElephantEdge

hackster.io
Protecting elephants from conservation's most pressing issues like poaching and human-wildlife conflict requires big, bold, and innovative solutions. Hackster.io, Smart Parks, Edge Impulse, Microsoft, and several other...

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event

Event: StreamingScience's #Tech4Wildlife Thursdays

StreamingScience
Join Conservation Technology Educator Andrew Schulz each Thursday at 7:00pm EST for #Tech4Wildlife Thursdays, a casual chat event with friends from the conservation tech community. Many of these chats will feature...

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article

Tracking Wild Reptiles, Amphibians, And Their Temperatures

Emily Taylor
In this case study from herpetologist Emily Taylor, we learn about the best methods and gear used to track snakes, lizards, and other reptiles and amphibians via radio-telemetry, and how these techniques have changed...

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Hi, have we had any break throughs in radio transmitters for snakes, surgery is way too invasive in my opinion. It works but we need to look at different technologies. 
Hi, I would also be interested if any new technologies recently turned up and if you may have a list of producers?
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How do I use a drone to capture radio-tracking data?

Debbie Saunders
Our seventh WILDLABS Tech Tutor is Debbie Saunders, who tackled the question: How do I use a drone to capture radio-tracking data? You can catch up on this tutorial on our Youtube channel and read through the...

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discussion

Mataki tracking tags—what's your experience?

I've read about the mataki tag with great interest, but I haven't had direct experience with them or heard from anyone who has. I would love to hear from those in the...

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Hi Joaquin,

The first versions of Mataki tags were open-source and the PCB build information was available online.  However the components for this version are obsolete and, if you can get them, are very expensive.

The latest versions of Mataki and the new Mataki-Lite are available commercially from my company and all the information is available at debuginnovations.com/Mataki.  My contact information is on the website if you have any questions.

Regards,

Dave

Hi Dave.
Thanks for your answer.
I saw the Debug Innovations website, the Mataki Little is very interesting.

Either way I am looking for open-source to be able to make our own transmitters because buying electronic devices abroad is very complicated and expensive for us.

Regards,

Joaquín

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article

Kākāpō Dreaming: A Wildlife Drones Adventure

Wildlife Drones
What is it like to track endangered species using drones? In this blog post from Wildlife Drones, Dr. Debbie Saunders travels to New Zealand to track the Kākāpō, an extemely rare and elusive bird of which approximately...

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article

Era of the Condor: A Species' Future in Recovery (Part 3)

Ellie Warren
In this three-part WILDLABS feature article series, we take a look at the various technologies used to fight the greatest threat to wild condors, lead poisoning, explore the innovations changing the ways we study and...

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discussion

Looking for a long term real time tracking technology for monitoring big game in South Africa

We currently use handheld radio telemetry, however for the amount of individuals we want to monitor it is not possible to continue this way. If anyone has knowledge of, or...

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@Sophie+Maxwell 

One point of clarification - Kineis is Argos.

CLS split off the management of the Argos satellite system from itself thereby creating the company called Kineis (a subsidiary of CLS). Kineis' goal was to acquire enough funding ($100m) to launch the 20+ nanosatellites by 2020, and the goal was fully funded a number of months ago. So now it's just a matter of manufacturing the satellites and launching them (one is already in orbit). 

I would disagree with your comment about "antenna size issue" with Argos because you can use a patch or a whip antenna. In addition, the whip antenna could be extremely thin and flexible such as using nitinol. With nitinol, for example, you can tie a knot into the antenna, and it would return to its regular state once undone. Of course with a whip antenna you do have a long wire coming out of the tag; however, that can be addressed with a patch antenna for terrestrial applications. Thus, it offers a flexible solution. 

I will also add that you can fill in those data gaps and in fact build a "terrestrial-like" network within the Argos framework by deploying a number of the Argos Goniometer stations. In that scenario you would have a tagged rhino transmitting to the Argos satellites, and as you know if a satellite is not overhead the message is lost. However, if there is an Argos Goniometer within range (tens of miles +/-) you will receive that message even if a satellite is not overhead. 

One last comment that I'll add is that the power requirements for an Argos transmission are a fraction of what is required from Iridium and/or Globalstar. Right now the lowest power output that I am aware of is 250mW; however, we expect to more than half that when the constellation is launch (70-100mW transmissions). I am not that familiar with some of the new sat tech in regards to transmitter design, output, etc. I suppose the one good thing about having an "old system" is that we know so much more about what can be done and what cannot be done. 

Anyways, happy to answer any questions you might have regarding Argos and/or Iridium. 

 

Dear Sophie,

I would like to comment directly on your post regarding your assessment and report about rhino tracking devices in wildlife conservation. I believe it is good to share thoughts and ideas on the WILDLabs forum about these topics, but people should be very careful when they are making bold statement with regards to performance of technology. Some elements in your reporting are highly speculative and lack detailed input from the actual users in the conservation field.

We find this quite concerning as you are not only misinforming people on the WILDlabs-forum, but you might also be providing your own administration (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs)with incorrect information.

With regards to the LoRaWAN based rhino trackers we like to set the following straight and we also raise some questions.

General

  • Did you have contact and feedback from people that actually have a personal experience in LoRaWAN based tracking devices for rhino in the field? As far as I know, the people you report about, do not have this experience. I recommend you to look for people in the field that do have this experience, such as park managers of African Parks and Peace Parks.

2.1) Satellite enabled trackers.

  • “Africa Wildlife Tracking are the most mature and reliable tracking solution”; How do you know this and what is your source? What numbers did you use to come to this conclusion?
  • Why do you name “Argos” CLS as a rhino tracking solution?
  • Telerax: “Cited by the community as reliable”; What are your sources here?
  • Ear tracking: Who is reporting that ear tag tracking is not an option? This is not a given, so please state your sources so we can verify this.

I realize your attempt is a light-weight update for DEFRA and not an in-depth investigative article, but this level of light-weight leans a bit more to very light-weight if the sources are not named. Or if the sources have vested interests. It’s unlikely that you’ll go into detail with regards to the sources but I find the stated information very superficial to be honest.

2.2) IoT Fixed Infrastructure Tags;

  • About your general comment on the “IoT Fixed Infrastructure Tags” – Why do you state that the costs for the infrastructure are “costing several £100,000s” – again, who/what is your source and how is this calculated?
  • “Leading solutions in this IoT space seem to be SMART Parks and Sigfox” – again, who is your source and what makes you think Smart Parks is leading? The same goes for Sigfox. For Sigfox I even think you need to identify the solution and not the technology, since Sigfox is “only” a network technology compared to LoRaWAN and is not a end-to-end solution.
  • Why are you including links to the websites of the satellite solutions and not to the Smart Parks solutions, even when this is as simple as www.smartparks.org.
  • Why are you reporting on the failure of Smart Parks rhino tags “however, there have been recent challenges with their newly miniaturized version, where 5 out of 6 units failed after a short time in Malawi. This could be an anomaly, as their previous versions worked well and we welcome further updates.”?; Who is your source and what did you do to verify this?
  • Sigfox: “We have heard some dissatisfaction with customer service and the capability to integrate data with other software and hardware solutions.” Again, who is your source and what makes you say this? Also, why are you speaking of “We”, as I understand this was a personal blogpost?
  • Cisco: What makes you say that Cisco “provided IoT trackers” and what is your source?

3) What are the emerging solutions?

  • Can you explain why CubeSats are the way to make rhino tracking devices smaller, cheaper and more secure? As you indicate: “Where there is great potential to bring smaller, cheaper, secure satellite tracking to solve these problems”.
  • What makes you conclude like this: “Whoever provides cheap tags, small transmitters, multiple gateways with super low costs data will win for wildlife conservation in this exciting new space.” What are your sources and what is the reasoning behind this? (deze zou ik niet doen)

I think a lot of your statements are debatable and not very well substantiated. I’m willing to go as far as to say that they are more damaging than providing solid information to the Wildlab-community and abroad. The community working on trying to find and build better solutions needs reliable information as this is already a very complex problem. Therefore, I would like to suggest that you improve the blogpost where possible with thorough and reliable information. I’m happy to assist you in finding the right information.

To get you started, I would like to offer you some key facts about what Smart Parks has been doing to make a rhino tracking solution:

  • In 2017 we have successfully deployed a LoRaWAN rhino horn implant into an Eastern Black rhino in Mkomazi National Park in Tanzania, and the device has giving location update for 2 years without any major issues. The sensor even continued working after it had grown out of the horn. This is a clear proof that a LoRaWAN Geoloc based solutions is perfectly fine for rhino tracking in situations where a LoRaWAN Geoloc network is possible. We have replicated these result in other parks in Africa. Please check our website and other sources for proof: https://www.smartparks.org/news/first-black-rhinos-protected-sensor-implants-horns/
  • In 2019 we have successfully deployed a LoRaWAN rhino horn implant into Eastern Black rhino in Liwonde National Park in Malawi. This new sensor does not use LoRaWAN Geoloc to update it’s position, but relies on GNSS (GPS). This allows for rhino tracking based on LoRaWAN in networks and areas that can not or do not want to use the Geoloc function. GNSS can offer higher location accuracy then the Geoloc method. Yes, we have had some issues while deploying prototypes into the field, but this is normal for these type of solutions. We now have a stable sensor in production that is working properly in multiple locations in Africa. Please also look around for proof and maybe start here: https://www.smartparks.org/news/holy-grail-in-rhino-monitoring-deployed-in-liwonde-national-park/
  • An important note I would like to add and something I believe is missing from your comments in general, is fact that we have started the OpenCollar Initiative, under which we have made the rhino LoRaWAN + GPS tracker completely open-source. https://opencollar.io/
  • Also, you are talking about rhino tracking solutions, however you only discuss the actual tracking devices in your blog post. Please also look at the Application level (what happens to the data) of these solutions, since there are also very important in the total solution.

I’m also happy to put you in touch with park managers who are actually working with the sensors on a day-to-day basis.

Hi Tim and also Thomas

Thanks for your comments. It is fantastic that there have been so many replies to this thread in response to the request for thoughts, clarifications and questions on this topic.

I’m available on email. You can reach me directly via WILDLABS messages.

Soph

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article

Tech4Wildlife News: SMART Mobile

The SMART Partnership
SMART is excited to showcase the features of their new data collection solution, SMART Mobile! Built around the specific needs of the SMART user community, this streamlined mobile tool allows staff in protected areas to...

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article

Announcing the 2020 CLP Team Award Winners

Conservation Leadership Programme
Our friends at the Conservation Leadership Programme are pleased to announce the winners of their 2020 CLP Team Award! Today, they'd like to feature some of the inspiring teams and projects that have earned this honor,...

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article

Innovator Interview: Hack the Poacher

Hack the Poacher
Conservation technology largely consists of two categories: tools to monitor and study wildlife and their habitats, and solutions to mitigate or prevent negative human impacts. The fight against poaching in particular...

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article

The Perfect Paw Print: Collecting Data with FIT

Ellie Warren
A couple months ago, we introduced you to the Footprint Identification Technique (FIT), a non-invasive way to build an identification algorithm from both wild and captive animals by photographing footprints. Today, we'...

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event

Webinar: The Next Generation Of Animal Telemetry

BOEM
Register now for this webinar on how BOEM and NASA are accelerating small satellite technology development to innovate new solutions for tracking large marine animals. This event will look at the next phases of a...

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event

WILDLABS Tech Tutors: Season One

WILDLABS Team
We've wrapped season one of Tech Tutors! Thank you to all of our Tutors, and to everyone who attended and made these episodes so exciting! You can find all of our episodes on the WILDLABS Youtube Channel, and find...

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event

Webinar: Non-invasive Conservation Genetics

Imogene Cancellare
Register for today's Conservation Science Webinar Series presentation, Non-invasive Conservation Genetics of Snow Leopards: a Review of Current Work and Defining Future Needs. Imogene Cancellare, PhD candidate in the...

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article

Get To Know FIT

WILDLABS Team
We're excited to welcome the WildTrack FIT group to our community! Today, we'd like to introduce you to the Footprint Identification Technique (FIT) and share how you can incorporate this tracking method into your field...

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article

Era of the Condor: A Species' Future in Recovery

Ellie Warren
In this three-part WILDLABS feature article, we'll take a look at the various technologies used to fight the greatest threat to endangered condors, explore the innovations that may change the way we study and understand...

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article

Talking Tracking with Xerius

Ellie Warren
How does tracking technology meet the many challenges specific to monitoring birds within their home ranges and over long distances during migration? WILDLABS community member Virginie Perilhon from Xerius Tracking...

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article

WILDLABS Tech Hub: WWF PandaSat

WILDLABS Team
At the 2018 London Illegal Wildlife Trade Conference, we announced the WILDLABS Tech Hub, an accelerator programme created to support the development and scaling of groundbreaking technological solutions addressing the ...

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event

Online Workshop: Conservation Technology

Hack the Poacher
On Friday, March 27th, meet the Hack the Poacher team in this free online webinar to discuss the latest innovations in conservation technology. This interactive event offers the opportunity to make connections in the...

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article

Enter the Zooniverse: Try Citizen Science for Yourself!

Ellie Warren
Trapped inside during the COVID-19 quarantine and looking to engage with conservation science without leaving your desk? Citizen science projects like those on Zooniverse offer a great opportunity to impact scientific...

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