Custom wildlife GPS tracking tags, designed for your project.
We design wildlife tracking tags around your animal and your data needs. Our own cellular GPS tag has its schematic complete and its board layout under way.
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The problem
A tracking tag puts a cellular modem, a GNSS receiver, power management and sensors onto one small board, with antennas, before any thought about the animal carrying it. Choices that look minor, such as how the battery is charged or how the satellite receiver is powered, shape the whole design. We have worked through those choices for our own tag, and some are still open. The schematic of our tag is split into five sheets, one each for power, modem, RF, GNSS and sensors. We would carry the same split into a project so that each block can be reviewed on its own, and we would scope the mechanical side with you from the start. The electronics, firmware and data pipeline would be designed together, and each stage would be reported honestly as it is reached.
What we've built
Cellular GPS wildlife tag
A cellular GPS tag with its own power management, a dedicated GNSS receiver alongside the modem's GNSS and a small set of sensors. It exists as a completed schematic of five sheets (power, modem, RF, GNSS and sensors) with a clean electrical rules check, and the board layout is under way. No hardware has been built or tested. The open decisions on power, charging and the GNSS supply are listed below.
Schematic complete; PCB layout in progress. Nothing built or tested yet, no animals, trials or customers.
| Layer | What we did | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Cellular | An nRF9151 cellular SiP. A nano-SIM is used for development, and a soldered eSIM is planned for production, with both SIM paths on shared nets. | nRF9151 · nano-SIM for development · soldered eSIM planned for production |
| Positioning | A dedicated u-blox MAX-M10S GNSS receiver sits alongside the modem's own GNSS, with an external LNA kept on that path. | MAX-M10S · modem GNSS · external LNA on the modem GNSS path |
| Power | An nPM1300 power management chip with USB-C charging and a JST battery connector. | Open decisions: battery chemistry, GNSS supply choice, reverse-polarity protection, and USB-C versus sealed charge pads for a potted collar |
| Sensors and storage | An ADXL367 accelerometer, an LIS2MDL magnetometer that is optional to fit, and MX25R6435F flash. | ADXL367 · LIS2MDL (fit optional) · MX25R6435F |
| Layout | Board layout has started, with the power nets routed first. | Schematic ERC clean · layout in progress |
How working with us goes
- 01 Scope We agree what has to be built, where it lives and where the data goes.
- 02 Prototype Working hardware and firmware on your bench, tested against real conditions.
- 03 Pilot A small batch on real sites, with fixes folded back into the design.
- 04 Production Design for manufacture, a production run, and support once it is in the field.
Related
Environmental monitoring ·Drones and aerial robotics ·IoT product design ·Legionella monitoring ·Asset and vehicle tracking ·Low-power IoT design · All sectors →
Need a tracking tag designed for your animal?
Custom hardware, firmware and software, from first sketch to production.
Talk to us about your project alessio.grespi@gmail.comWant it deployed, ready to run?
Paqett is the monitoring company we run, offering white-label deployments. Talk to us about whether a tracking project could use it.
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