Open‐source, low‐cost modular GPS collars for monitoring and tracking wildlife

Abstract

Monitoring the movements and behaviour of wildlife using radio telemetry or GPS devices has been critical to the fields of ecology and conservation over several decades. For many field projects however, commercially available devices can be expensive and may not always be ideally suited for collecting desired data. We present a low‐cost solution of customizable tracking devices based on the open‐source Arduino system. These devices can be custom designed for specific studies and easily programmed to collect desired data. Custom‐built collars with GPS and accelerometer units were trialled on 30 free‐ranging domestic dogs in rural Ethiopia. These collars collected high‐resolution data at a frequency of 10 fixes per hour and accelerometer data at 10 Hz over a 10‐day period, at a cost of approximately £100 ($130 USD) per collar. These devices can be placed on any species that can handle a weight of 15.4 g plus battery and housing. The current configuration weighs approximately 240 g which would be suitable for any animal above 8 kg living in terrestrial environments.

Modular E-Collar for Animal Telemetry: An Animal-Centered Design Proposal

“…However, in most cases, these results focus only on technological deployment (autonomy, signal range, failed devices, etc. ), and in the case of evaluating the physical design of the device, these studies serve few and very superficial objectives (for example, the device has been broken, has caused injuries to animals, or the mortality rate) [ 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 ]. In addition, these evaluations are merely quantitative, not giving value to the experience of the professionals.…”

“…The application of telemetry in animals presents difficulties, mainly related to (i) weight distribution; (ii) autonomy; (iii) flexibility in design; and (iv) cost of the devices. These problems have become apparent from the analysis of three types of sources: scientific publications referring to the physical design of animal telemetry devices [ 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 ]; scientific publications referring to the evaluation of animal telemetry [ 13 , 25 , 26 , 27 ] as well as commercial solutions currently available [ 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 ].…”

A wireless sensor network for underground passages: Remote sensing and wildlife monitoring

“…They are classified only in respect to their species using the work described in this article. It is noted that this study takes into account recent studies regarding large passage monitoring, 49 animal tracking, 50 long-term environmental monitoring, 51 and behavioral inference. 52,53 As far as we are aware, the only alternative approach to species recognition of untagged animals is using image processing, for example, References 54,55; however, this is usually performed online, using static images taken as snapshots, and it is error-prone.…”

Alpine ungulate movement: Quantification of spatiotemporal environmental energetics and social interaction

“…3-D printing using ABS plastic can mitigate many of the problems of vacuum-formed housings and are therefore more suitable for medium-term projects (see also Foley & Sillero-Zubiri 2020). This is, however, more costly and time-consuming (each housing may take several hours to print, and must subsequently be water-proofed, so that it takes about 1 week to fully prepare 10 tags).…”

“…Importantly, the last few years of biologging studies have seen an appreciable shift away from workers buying company-produced tags, to construction of their own systems (Gleiss et al 2010, Harrison et al 2011, Foley & Sillero-Zubiri 2020 and with this, the necessity of customising tag size and shape as well as working with attachment methods, result in devices causing as little detriment as possible . Tag optimisation is multi-faceted though.…”