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I am new to development using GPS so any help will be most appreciated.

Project:- I am attempting to locate gps tracking hardware for a student project to locate animals. I do not want to use cell phone SMS or yearly subscriptions packages as this is not practical where there a number of animals to be tracked. A solar powered device would be a bonus?

My understanding is the following will be required:

  1. A GPS receiver (to get the gps location from satelites) - result is a 'navigation message'. This hardware device would be on the animal.
  2. A transmitter with an antenna which will listen out for radio waves on set frequencies from the receivers, amplify them and its tuner will filter based on a particular frequency. The 'navigation message' (or number of navigation messages) would be held on the the transmitter.
  3. I am not sure if I can get an appropriate hardware transceiver with both the receiver and transmitter in 1 that can be attached to the animal?
  4. The data would then to be sent over the internet from the transmitter to a web server via a HTTP request and parsed to be stored on the database.
  5. A phone app / web app could then query the database to identify where the animal is at its last stored location or analyse data to determine its route over time when required.

If you have any advice / suggestions on the process above or advice on types of hardware / location of hardware to complete this project I would really appreciate it.

Polly
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1 Answers1

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Polly, here are a few commercial solutions for GPS Animal Tracking. Some are rather expensive, but at least this shows what is out there professionally.

I think one of your primary issues here is battery power, size, and weight. GPS receivers use a fair bit of power when on, so it would have to be "off" but for a few seconds every-so-often, the rate determining how long the batteries will last. Solar recharging is an idea, but is that compatible with these particular animals?

If you wanted to construct something like this, there are a vast array of GPS modules to start with, depending on how integrated and customized you want to get with the idea. But these are receivers only - they will not broadcast anything. To get the GPS data remotely, you're going to need both a way to store the GPS data, and a transmitter (your #3) to send it to you. Since the transmitters would be small and low-power, this will limit the range you can receive them from. Not impossible, just a little more challenging.

  1. Is a web developer available that can write that web and database code?
  2. Is a phone developer available for the phone app?

Here are some interesting articles from others that have DIY their own low-budget trackers. I hope this gives you some ideas.

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