Hi everyone
I'm a falconer looking for Arquino gps tracking ideas. Ready-made equipment for tracking our hunting birds of prey can get pretty expensive. Marshall and Merlin make some of the best gps tracking systems out there. Here's some things I'd like to make:
I'd like to make the Arduino equivalent to a Marshall Pocket Link GPS data logger for use with Marshall's Aerovision Android phone app. PocketLink Design on Vimeo
I'd like to make a portable falconry real-time gps tracking system. Gps receiver/data logger/long range transmitter. I've seen asset trackers that track a few miles, but not any that track a large bird up to say 80 miles out. https://marshallradio.com/ww/product/marshall-gps-system/
Any ideas on how to build these things. I'm an extreme noob with Arduino.
And there is a reason for that, its not easy or cheap to make real small GPS trackers.
If you could make very small trackers a lot cheaper, then you wonder why someone is not doing so and undercutting the expensive ones.
Not a lot of point providing the forum with links to sites that require a login.
LoRa will certainly do the distance thing and I have made a GPS tracker boards (without battery) at 41mm x 18mm.
Getting a GPS tracker down to the size of that Marshall setup would be a significant challenge for a very experienced electronics engineer. Significant investment too.
A quick google search for "miniature gps tracker" brought up a lot of hits for ready made kit that could be bought quite cheapy and probably much lighter than any Arduino based solution.
There are, and they are mostly mobile phone based.
Falconary\Bird trackers are normally required to be indepedant of mobile phone coverage, so you dont loose the bird because there is no phone coverage.
I also seem to recall that there is a timing constraint in the phone networks that limits reception distances to 25 miles are so.
True. The OP mentioned android phone app so i may have assumed they wanted to use the mobile phone network. But as you say, you can't guarantee coverage.
There's a few LoRa based GPS tracker projects out there. Ond ir more use Adafruit feather boards.
OK...let's assume I'll be using my own commercial gps transmitter, so weight is not an issue. Can I build a real-time gps tracking receiver with a gps data logger to track a few transmitters, log the transmitter data, and display the bird's gps location on a view screen?
I have done it with a LoRa DIY LoRa GPS tracker transmitter, such as used in high altitude balloons. The receiver is an Arduino of some sort and that displayed the tracker location information on a local display and then sent it via Bluetooth to an Android mapping app called Alpinquest.
However whether you can build the receiver for a ' commercial gps transmitter' implies that you both know the transmitter type, frequency and how it encodes the data and can then build a matching receiver.
Ah, now we're getting somewhere!
The transmitter I currently use is a UHF 433 micro transmitter, so a Merlin 1/3N MX Transmitter - Long Range would be the ideal radio tracker.
As for gps, I haven't explored to options beyond Marshall GPS
.
Update: I'm going to focus on a transmitter build and then build the other hardware I'll need later. I've been digging around online and came across the Arduino Beetle. Is there an ultimate gps (or other gps) that will work on the Beetle? I see it's Arduino Leonardo compatable.
