Hi Lars,

thanks a lot for the recommendation and this great use case!

Our team at Firetail is very enthusiastic about pushing the boundaries for the visualization and annotation of large datasets and it is great to see our work towards a Vectronic acceleration workflow was successul.

If there are researchers on wildlabs that are interested in the process, we should compile a short step-by-step tutorial. This would help to get started with Vectronic acc visuals/annotation.

In general: Firetail is not limited to specific tags vendors. We aim to support a complete set of GPS/Acceleration/Sensor data... if you experience problems with your data sets, don't hesitate to contact us!

Tobias

Hi @SaraTC,

I can see that the products CERES TAG and CERES WILD have been mentioned in the thread. Some information on the tags

• They are the only commercial, direct to satellite, animal monitoring ear  tag
• Solar powered with no battery change required
• Total weight: 35.55g
• No towers or other infrastructure such as  receiving stations, radios or large power systems needed. We are a plug and play system. 
• Direct purchase through our ecommerce platform
• CERES WILD is fully integrated with EARTHRANGER, whilst CERES TAG is integrated with EARTHRANGER through our software partner, Mapipedia.
• https://www.cerestag.com/ceres-wild-box-of-tags/ available in boxes of 5 or 10 (you will need to purchase the Ceres Tag  Smart Applicator 
• https://www.cerestag.com/ceres-tag-box-of-tags available in boxes of 5, 10 ,24

Our devices are now in 25 countries and on over 13 species. We are very happy to talk with you via https://www.cerestag.com/ (Let’s talk) button. 

Hello everyone,

I work with Sara (who originally posted the question) and she's asked me to pick up the discussion on GPS collars for goats.

Firstly, thank you all so much for the helpful information and recommendations you've shared - it's really helped as we try to figure out the best way forward. From what I've read in the thread, there are clearly some options that aren't necessarily suited to what we're trying to do, so it's helped narrow things down a lot. Some of you mentioned it would be good to have more details about the project and what we're trying to achieve, so here's some more information:
 

• Along with our local NGO partner, we're trying to understand grazing patterns for small herds of goats (~10 - 25 animals per group) on a small island (62.5 km²) in Cabo Verde. 
• We will first be conducting a participatory mapping process, asking the farmers to indicate on a map the areas where their goats typically graze.
• We then want to use GPS or other tracking on the goats themselves to get a more detailed and accurate set of data. We plan to overlay the information on where the goats are grazing with drone mapping of the island's vegetation, which identifies endemic and endangered plant species.
• We want to use this data to inform a grazing management plan that reduces goat grazing pressure on those species.
• We don't need to cover the entire island at once; we can likely focus on specific areas and herds at a time, before moving on to the next.
• The goats tend to largely stick together, so we likely only need to collar one or two 'lead' individuals in the herd to get a sense of their movements.
• To make sure we're not missing periods where the goats might be grazing on endemic species, we need to record positions with fairly high frequency (i.e. at least every 10 minutes or so, is my best guess, but open to correction or guidance).
• We don't necessarily need these data points to be available in real time, but remote downloading would be useful.
• This is not a long-term project for which we require tags or collars with years of battery life.
• We're on a limited budget and essentially we're looking for a simple and relatively affordable solution.
• (And thank you, @antonab, for recommending we check - there doesn't appear to be SigFox coverage in Cabo Verde.)

From what I've read on this thread, it looks like a LoRaWAN approach with receiving stations could be the best solution, along the lines of what @DoctorB described. I plan to read up on it, as like Sara, I'm very new to all of this, but in the meantime wanted to thank you all for the help and information. 

If any of you has time to share a bit more information about the equipment needed to set up a LoRaWAN system with the above parameters in mind (or thinks that it would in fact be unsuitable) please get in touch!

Anni

@alsnothome the SnapperGPS looks sooooooo SWEET!. I am super-duper keen to try it out! 

I'm co-developing SnapperGPS as part of my PhD. We're currently working on getting a release on GroupGets. Everything is moving a little slowly because of the chip shortage, though.

Happy to hear there's interest!