Great lessons around stakeholder engagement and project management in this article. Users and developers alike are key to your project. User requirements gathering can provide a lot of insight if done well but it can be hard to prioritise the magic that some users want versus what can be practically achieved by a developer with your time and budget constraints. Find advice from a good project manager or business analyst if you can to help with technical language and project design barriers. Definitely agree with the above comments on getting your developers engaged with your users where possible. 

Field based users often want to spend as little time as possible with technology. You need to use their time wisely to capture their requirements. Make sure they feel listened to. You can never please them all but hopefully you can focus in on critical users and key priorities and they will bring the others along.

Lots of good ideas and advice from everyone.

Time/money/quality/speed/etc tradeoffs, as always. Start with your minimum viable product, get it out there (at least to your initial target users - early adopters/enthusiasts), and iteratively improve, if poss. Don't go for the Big Bang approach where everything is "perfect", because it won't be. Users expect a lot from apps - there are incredibly well-resourced companies putting out incredible apps for free - and users almost always expect more. So... if there's an existing app (like iNaturalist/eBird/...) that can do the job for you, use it, or work with them to adapt.

Additionally, mobile phone hardware/software upgrades can often result in app issues/upgrades being necessary, so plan on maintenance costs as well as enhancements along the way, as others have said. Particularly when targetting both major platforms (use a cross-platform dev tool!).

If you're lucky enough to have a volunteer development team, treat/reward them as well as possible, to keep the system going. Whether that's with money or publication co-authorship or beer, find a way.

Could probably comment more but should probably write a paper...!

Hello Malou

I hazard the guess that what you are looking for is already available for livestock monitoring, so I would look in that direction unless you want to re-invent that wheel. I admit I am not 100% sure what is out there as I am working on something unrelated. Homemade tags may be cheaper but don't underestimate the effort and experience required to make something reliable and robust.

Reliably monitoring body temperature and heart rate may also be more difficult than you expect. I looked into this some time ago for birds such as golden eagles and discovered that the most reliable option required attaching a sensor onto the skin. I then decided that I would have to do without this and moved on. I am in no way an expert on this and others may know much better so don't give up quite yet. Again, there may be ready-made solutions in the livestock tracking market that do these types of measurements already.

Anyway, I can offer you a few details on GPS components I have come across that may be of interest. Please note that although these components are on my tracker prototype, this is still under development and I cannot yet say how well they perform. But their technical details looked good enough to give them a try for my project.

GPS MODULE: uBlox EVA-M8M
- certainly not the cheapest, GBP 10 bought in single units, cheaper in bulk;
- stores GPS satellites' almanac and ephemeris data onboard and can interpolate future trajectories. This means that the module has to be switched on only once in 48 h to get all the satellite data (typically takes 45 s) and then fire up only for a few seconds to get a position fix. The key benefit of this is energy conservation, which on most tags is important.
Data sheet: https://www.u-blox.com/sites/default/files/EVA-M8-FW3_DataSheet_(UBX-16014189).pdf
Source: https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/u-blox-america-inc/EVA-M8M-1/672-1112-1-ND/9818030

GPS ANTENNA: ProAnt PRO-OB-430, GBP1.00
A very small and lightweight GPS antenna, much more so than the usual ceramic patch antennas. If weight and size are an issue then this may come in handy.
data sheet: http://www.proant.se/files/user/Application%20note%20-%20OnBoard%20SMD%20GNSS%20rev%202.0.pdf
Source: https://www.digikey.co.uk/products/en?keywords=1532-1000-1-ND

A hint for more inspiration and sources of useful information on lightweight and energy-efficient electronics: websites on remote controlled model aircraft and amateur weather balloons.

It would be useful if you could post here a summary of your results on the GPS module search, once complete, for the benefit of those looking for the same details in the future.

Good luck !

J

https://github.com/LoRaTracker/GPSTutorial/tree/master/GPS%20performance%20comparisons

I'm a bit late to this conversation, but in case anyone else is searching "gps" that link above is one of the best "gsp shoot outs" I've come across.

HTH

Hi Jenny,

Trust you're well. Were you successful in getting something for your team?

Hi Jenny,

Interesting problem.

I don't have direct experience, but it looks like there are some experts you can probably reach out to and ask... if you haven't already:

http://www.groundcontrol.com/Caribbean_Satellite_Internet.htm

http://www.globaltt.com/en/internet_satellite/Caribbean.html

Also I found an interesting discussion on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/networking/comments/72wrio/satellite_internet_in_the_caribbean/

Best of luck!

Ivan

Excellent, that good to hear.

No, I didn't have anyone in particular in mind, it's just helpful to have that info in the back of my mind as I talk to different people/projects. I was also wondering whether to include the invite in our next Digest which will be coming out tomorrow, and based on this response I'll pop it in there :) 

Congratulations! This looks like great tech.

It certainly is. Whatever gets the job done and makes it easier for us to find the animals and prosecute the poachers. Also interested in thermal-imaging hardware and perhaps radar. I'm new to them all.

Hello Sean
I just had another thought: industrial machine vision systems come with all sorts of image inspection tools including such things as "edge detection". I wonder if this could be used in conjunction with a normal (not thermal) high resolution digital camera.

The general idea would be to:
1. take photos whilst on the move through a snare-infested area where a high res camera would be able to pick up a thin wire loop with sufficient resolution to make it visible;
2. let attached computer with vision software analyse images instantly for straight or looped edges that would indicate a snare.

What could help considerably is to take pictures in subdued natural light, maybe at dusk or dawn using a strong flash, possibly not just the built in flash of the camera but an external one. On the assumption that most snares are made from plain "shiny" metal, they should show up fairly well as "bright highlights" against the otherwise fairly dull (in terms of specular reflection) undergrowth. It would get more difficult though if the foilage was covered in water droplets as these would reflect the flash light, too.

I admit this is an idea that just sprung to mind and I have no idea how well this may work in practice. If you want to have a go yourself, set up a typical "snare scenario" and take some high resolution photos as described above from a few metres away. Then use free vision system software to process the images on your computer and see what you can find. Try this one, for example, https://www.teledynedalsa.com/en/products/imaging/vision-software/sherlock/

I have used it some years ago (for an industrial application) and found it very useful on early trials as it allows you to use all features processing images from a local folder rather than a live camera. This would be all you need to test whether there is any merit in this.

Sorry if industrial vision applications are not within your skill set but I thought I mention it here in case someone else wants to investigate it. I am not exactly twiddling thumbs otherwise I would be seriously tempted to have a look at this myself (pun intended:)).

Let me know if you need some more input on this,
Joachim

P.S.: A rough calculation on camera resolution:
- snare wire diameter is, say, 3 mm
- target size in image of the wire is at least 6 pixels (to reliably show diagonal edges)
- 20 Megapixel camera image is about 5000 pixel wide
- then you could cover an area 2.5 m wide per image (5000 / 6 * 3)
> this may be a workable distance to cover per image.