I am looking into building a tracking device that would do the following:
Send GPS data via LoRa from pet arduino to arduino base receiver in my house.
Base sends GPS data to internet server
Pull (push?) GPS data to Android and plot on Google Maps.
I know item 3 is kind of out of scope of Arduino discussions but maybe someone here has experience with this or at least point me to the correct forum?
More details:
Looking at AdaFruit feather for smaller size.
LoRa point to point with high gain antenna on roof (USA using 900Mhz band)
Motion sense to wake tracker only when needed to extend battery life.
Need to push some sort of alert to phone in case pet escapes without being noticed.
admirable project idea, but, I fear that, unless your pet is something along the line of a horse, or larger, tracking will not be an issue, as the size/weight of the required hardware and power source will pretty much keep the poor beast anchored to one spot.
There was a pet tracker build with gsm module by somebody on this forum. A lot less weight.
I am looking at weight and size. I suspect the ultimate solution will be custom PCB along with well planned battery power management.
I am just getting started with Arduino
There are a couple of products on the market that do this sort of thing but they are designed for marketability to a wide range of customers so they have stupid short battery life or other "features" I am not interested in.
I will look for the GSM project. Really should be about the same size. Maybe even smaller since a LoRa module might actually be smaller than a cellular one.
GPS modules are power hogs so it all comes down to battery size vs GPS runtime.
123Splat:
admirable project idea, but, I fear that, unless your pet is something along the line of a horse, or larger, tracking will not be an issue, as the size/weight of the required hardware and power source will pretty much keep the poor beast anchored to one spot.
I am a bit more optimistic I think!
It turns out that Adafruit has almost everything I am looking for.
For the pet mounted part:
Adafruit Feather 32u4 RFM95 LoRa Radio combo board 5.5 grams.
Adafruit Ultimate GPS FeatherWing 10 grams
MikroElektronika 2000maH LiPo battery ( from Digikey) 80 grams.
best guess for housing would be 50 grams.
Total around 150 grams
Rough estimate of power consumption is for an average of 8 ma which puts battery life over 7 days.
I think the biggest challenge will be writing code that can actually achieve the 8ma (or less) target.
Other challenges of course but will have to deal with them as they come along.
they are designed for marketability to a wide range of customers so they have stupid short battery life
This reveals either your ignorance of electronics design, your incomplete product survey or both. Battery life is of extreme concern to all serious designers and manufacturers of portable products, especially trackers.
LoRa point to point with high gain antenna on roof (USA using 900Mhz band)
High gain antennas are very directional. Not useful for "pet tracking" when mounted in a fixed orientation and location.
Great project for learning, though!