GPS-GSM transmitters

Common features and functionality

  • Hardware
  • Efficient solar modules and related harvesting scheme
  • Advanced battery management designed to protect battery from over and undercharge (maximizes the life of the battery and the device itself)
  • Fully charged battery allows for taking approx. 2000 GPS fixes without any solar charging
  • GNSS module -Support for GPS/GLONASS/GALILEO and many advanced modes including continuous satellite tracking while
  • 2G GSM module in combination with the network operators used maximizes the global coverage of the devices and minimizes the data transfer fees
  • Collected Data

Includes raw sensor data:

  • GPS data (DateTime, Latitude, Longitude, Altitude, Speed, Direction)
  • temperature
  • solar panel metrics (light exposure [%])
  • magnetometer data (terrestrial magnetism)
  • accelerometer data (acceleration)
  • gyroscope data (angular speed, mainly used for onboard automation)
  • barometric data (absolute atmospheric pressure, relative altitude changes = altimeter)

and advanced metrics and features:

  • body orientation (pitch, roll)
  • obboard mortality flag
  • Acitvity logs
  • Device configuration (In ANITRA web dashboard)

Includes basic cycle for GPS/sensors

  • „Solar time“ or „human time“ scheduling
  • Comfortable user interface (control by sliders, frequencies in seconds/minutes/hours, visualization and clear management of pending settings)

And other functionality highlights

  • Mortality detection mode
  • Data collection triggered by activity events (e.g flight detection)
  • Location-based configuration (geofencing using user-managed database of Points of Interest)
  • Data bursting (sensor data bursts up to 50Hz)
  • Continuous GPS mode
  • Communication

Channels:

  • "data" (GPRS): primary communication/delivery channel, full record (and complete content of memory) delivered through (no need for remote UHF download)
  • “SMS (short message) as a backup channel“: in case of unavailability of mobile data coverage a simplified short record is delivered. All the pending data (unsent or sent previously in a short form only) could be delivered anytime as the data coverage restore

Communication scheduler:

  • Fixed UTC time slots
  • Human time (interval and start hour of the cycle)
  • Solar time (day/night communication interval)
  • based on the data in memory (i.e.communication started as soon as thedefined number of records collected)
  • ad-hoc „one-time“ communication request aside of regular schedules (e.g. user wishes to have fresh data update during planned physical locality check)
Failure proof concepts:
  • GPS location taken for each communication
  • Information on used BTS and its locations available (useful in case of missing GPS)
  • Mortality mode (quickly detects and notifies any issue)
Other:
  • OTA (“over the air”) remote device firmware update: a crucial functionality which allows upgrading tags once deployed in the field (e.g. in case of any bug or simply in order to benefit from the latest development)
  • storage mode: unused device can be powered off (battery state is notified each X defined days
  • VHF/UHF radio buoy extension available for larger models – allows to find the device in the field