These videos are awesome. I'm eager to see part 4. My goal and the reason why I found your videos is that I'm trying to use 2 devices to track my dog when we are hiking, so she can go wherever doing dog things in the mountains while my heart does not explode wondering whether if she is close by or she has just gone for good. The hardest part for me is to build the communication between the esp32 and the smartphone and show her position (hopefully on a tropo map) when we have no 4g connection in the mountains. Anyway thank you for the inspiration and I hope you make a part 4! Saludos desde Barcelona, Spain!
Has conseguido el proyecto? Cuando no hay cobertura 2g, ¿Cómo envias los datos? Yo estoy haciendo algo parecido pero con dos modulos lora. No me dan el alcance deseado y muchas veces en la montaña no hay 2G, por eso probe con esos modulos. saludos
Great update! I ended up making a version for our cat almost identical to your second iteration. Inspired by your videos of course. We used it for a while but gave up on because she hates having a collar on. The size was ok as I was able to make it fit in a 3D printed enclosure that had the same curve radius as her collar. Another issue with a cat collar is that most of them are break away, and she would regularly exceed the range on her escapades and sometimes manage to get the collar open. Some neighbor's were kind enough to call the number we had on it to let us know they found it in their yard... Anyway, great to see you're still working in it.
That's cool. Glad someone made a cat version. Haven't had a cat for a while but I do remember that they go mental if you throw off their center of mass. I'll keep working on making something cat friendly. Cheers!
im using the tractive gps tracker for my cat for about a year and im pretty happy with it so far. the monthly cost is 4euro per month, the tracker itself is 50euro and u can get a replacement once a year for free. so far my cat managed to get rid of the tracker twice but i was able to find it both times. the battery lasts for about 72 hours but if u use the live tracking to exactly pin point the location the battery depletes quick so u need some reserve(it makes noise and light). u need a decent cell phone signal fo it to work the sim itself is build into the tracker.
This is what I'm using. After a bunch of testing however I think I would stick with the Pro-Mini. The XIAO has some issues with uploading as well as with the deepsleep library. www.seeedstudio.com/Seeeduino-XIAO-Arduino-Microcontroller-SAMD21-Cortex-M0+-p-4426.html
how much power this tracker uses while GPS and LoRa is on? why not use transistor to turn off GPS/LoRa when not in use and turn on each module when needed ?
Loved your Part 3. Just how long can send a tracker to sleep for? What about having the Tracker turn on an audio or video transmission, or take a picture and send that upon command, or store audio and or video and send it WiFi upon request or set time?
You can make the tracker sleep as long as you like really. All those things you mentioned could be done but you'd need a better processor. Maybe a RPi.
Hi, I really like what you've done with the tracker, all around. I was thinking of building something similar. It appears the code you have up on your github is from the earlier days (3 years ago). Any chance you could post the newer software you demonstrate in this video?
Watched all three of your dog tracker videos, really keen to explore Lora. Andreas also a great inspiration as are you. Just want to know is there any security to ensure the endpoints only associate with your rooftop or mobile base stations? I was looking at a recent video on Qmesh which also know allows voice comms via Lora , and looking at this a for kids tracker plus sos walkie talkie. But would want to ensure that my endpoints are only speaking to my base/mobile stations. Also was looking for misplaced home items, keys, remotes etc build a Lora tag.
You would need to use encryption to make sure the communication was secure. I have not done that but the LoRa libraries do provide for that option. Interesting idea about he LoRa tags. Wouldn't want it to use GPS but you could hone in on it using the RSSI (received signal strength). Let me know if you try that eh.
One thought - given the tracker can do 2 way communication, you could have the tracker ping location every 10 minutes only, until a button press on the transceiver which then radically decreases the interval between location broadcast - it will stretch battery, but let you get close to the "10 minutes old" location before going to high precision / high frequency. (I assume the dog won't move more than 1 km in 10 minutes, typically).
Thanks for this! I plan to get some sort of network going in my area...Glenoe - Highlands, for people, dogs (Meg the Colliewobble is eaily enticed by deer n birds) and me (when out running and loss of mobile signal). We're surrounded by mountains so entirely possible that repeaters on solar could be placed on neighbouring tops hopefully giving large coverage?! Coming to this project with absolutely bugger all knowledge of coding so having to scrabble between sites for parts list/code. Good to know its possible though.
Are you a Ham? We've been doing this since the 1990s. APRS. Minus the internet side which came later. Bob - WB4APR created most of it. RIP Bob! He passed a month or so ago. Retired from the Navy. Worked for NASA. Worked with John Glenn at times. Built satellites and designed numerous electronic devices. We lost a GREAT Ham when he went SK! My question is 433mhz? Looked a little short for 6.5 inch ground plane. I believe it's a 100mw version for 433mhz. Will chew up battery faster. 10sec beacon seems way to often but with that short a range 10 sec probably a good idea. Give a better bread crumb trail too. But just to locate you could reduce the beacon time, use directional antenna and or setup more gateways. My goal is to get a APRS tracker small enough for a drone. They make some that are fairly small but still to bulky for a small drone. Even a DJI Air2S it's still a little bulky. Plus I need to check about harmonics / intermod. Some will only reduce to 500mw which is probably more than needed. So how did this work out?
Yeah, still working on it. It's 915Mhz. I haven't used anything but the RFM95 so far. I should look into higher power ones at some point. Currently working on miniaturization. Wish me luck.
@@dork3nergy yeah mini is the tough part! Ive got Ham APRS trackers and Walkie talkies but they are BIG! They make one now thats pretty small. 40 grams i think. 1 watt and built in GPS plus other sensors but its $200! The cheapest thing is 4G LTE tracker. Its Its only 40 grams, $30 plus a $5 monthly subscription. A Ham on ebay sells them for Drones. But id much rather be able to see my tracker on the Ham APRS map on my PC and not rely on a subscription.
Have you looked at any of the expresslrs hardware. It would combine the esp32 and the Lora board and antenna. The you would only need the battery and charge controller. I was thinking about using that to build exactly what you did but haven't gotten around to it yet.
I had not looked into that system. First glance it seems interesting. I did not see a GPS built into those units but I may have missed it. You might also need to create your own firmware to transmit GPS data instead of flight controller info. The range might also be much smaller for a ground based system...once something is up in the air, the line of sight increases dramatically. Let me know if you do try this, I'd be interested in your results.
I've seen the ExpressLRS floating around the FPV groups, but I hadn't taken a serious look as I haven't been flying much lately. However, after looking at what it can do and the tiny size, I'm very impressed! ExpressLRS is based on SX127x hardware combined with an ESP8285, ESP32 or STM32 MCU using LoRa modulation, same as ImmersionRC Ghost and Crossfire. I didn't realize these systems were using LoRa. It looks as if you could simply take an ExpressLRS receiver, gps, battery (& possibly charger) to make a tiny tracker. Firmware would have to be written and it appears that ExpressLRS is all open source on github. I also see that it'll run on R9 hardware, which I have laying around. I might have to look into this hardware as it's already half-built for you...
Hey @scott glad you're digin' it. I put the code I used for the XIAO in the dogtracker2 repositiory : github.com/dork3nergy/DogTracker2 It's is poorly commented but should get you started. The XIAO has an annoying habit of clearing the EEPROM memory when you upload code so just be aware that you need to write a default config to the device every time you push new code.
Hello again! I have problem with my gps data. Its not send the data . I read artikel on google and got the gps can work with lora together. I test your code and lora can work but its not send the data gps, how can I save data gps then transmit to lora? Please help mee....Iam stuck...
Make a simple sketch to just read GPS data. You can use the example from the GPS library you are using. It could be there is no data because the GPS has not connected to the satellites or it could be your wiring is wrong.
@@dork3nergy thanks for replying, i realized where i was wrong was not using the time range, so when the power supply was given gps and lora worked together which made my arduino unable to complete the task, in advance i am very grateful to you. respect from me..
@@dork3nergy I know old 900mhz wireless can go up to 5 miles with good antennas, but we actually needed better signals then what this would require. Same frequency though and power output so should be pretty good.
I wan't try this for 2 or 3 gps module using for 1 gateway , is that posible? Soryy my language so bad. Piss haha, by the way your video is cool, i hope you answer my question..
These videos are awesome. I'm eager to see part 4. My goal and the reason why I found your videos is that I'm trying to use 2 devices to track my dog when we are hiking, so she can go wherever doing dog things in the mountains while my heart does not explode wondering whether if she is close by or she has just gone for good. The hardest part for me is to build the communication between the esp32 and the smartphone and show her position (hopefully on a tropo map) when we have no 4g connection in the mountains. Anyway thank you for the inspiration and I hope you make a part 4! Saludos desde Barcelona, Spain!
Meshtastic.
Has conseguido el proyecto? Cuando no hay cobertura 2g, ¿Cómo envias los datos? Yo estoy haciendo algo parecido pero con dos modulos lora. No me dan el alcance deseado y muchas veces en la montaña no hay 2G, por eso probe con esos modulos. saludos
Great update! I ended up making a version for our cat almost identical to your second iteration. Inspired by your videos of course. We used it for a while but gave up on because she hates having a collar on. The size was ok as I was able to make it fit in a 3D printed enclosure that had the same curve radius as her collar. Another issue with a cat collar is that most of them are break away, and she would regularly exceed the range on her escapades and sometimes manage to get the collar open. Some neighbor's were kind enough to call the number we had on it to let us know they found it in their yard... Anyway, great to see you're still working in it.
That's cool. Glad someone made a cat version. Haven't had a cat for a while but I do remember that they go mental if you throw off their center of mass. I'll keep working on making something cat friendly. Cheers!
im using the tractive gps tracker for my cat for about a year and im pretty happy with it so far.
the monthly cost is 4euro per month, the tracker itself is 50euro and u can get a replacement once a year for free.
so far my cat managed to get rid of the tracker twice but i was able to find it both times.
the battery lasts for about 72 hours but if u use the live tracking to exactly pin point the location the battery depletes quick so u need some reserve(it makes noise and light).
u need a decent cell phone signal fo it to work the sim itself is build into the tracker.
Very cool.
Great work.
AvE and DorkEnergy -- almost makes me want to move to Canada!
No better place if you don't mind freezing your nards off.
At 2:00 What is a seduino zhao, are you referring to the Seeeduino Ziao RP2040?
This is what I'm using. After a bunch of testing however I think I would stick with the Pro-Mini. The XIAO has some issues with uploading as well as with the deepsleep library.
www.seeedstudio.com/Seeeduino-XIAO-Arduino-Microcontroller-SAMD21-Cortex-M0+-p-4426.html
how much power this tracker uses while GPS and LoRa is on? why not use transistor to turn off GPS/LoRa when not in use and turn on each module when needed ?
Loved your Part 3. Just how long can send a tracker to sleep for? What about having the Tracker turn on an audio or video transmission, or take a picture and send that upon command, or store audio and or video and send it WiFi upon request or set time?
You can make the tracker sleep as long as you like really. All those things you mentioned could be done but you'd need a better processor. Maybe a RPi.
Hi, I really like what you've done with the tracker, all around. I was thinking of building something similar. It appears the code you have up on your github is from the earlier days (3 years ago). Any chance you could post the newer software you demonstrate in this video?
I've made a new repository for the latest software. You can get it here :
github.com/dork3nergy/DogTracker2
Watched all three of your dog tracker videos, really keen to explore Lora. Andreas also a great inspiration as are you. Just want to know is there any security to ensure the endpoints only associate with your rooftop or mobile base stations? I was looking at a recent video on Qmesh which also know allows voice comms via Lora , and looking at this a for kids tracker plus sos walkie talkie. But would want to ensure that my endpoints are only speaking to my base/mobile stations. Also was looking for misplaced home items, keys, remotes etc build a Lora tag.
You would need to use encryption to make sure the communication was secure. I have not done that but the LoRa libraries do provide for that option. Interesting idea about he LoRa tags. Wouldn't want it to use GPS but you could hone in on it using the RSSI (received signal strength). Let me know if you try that eh.
That was both informative AND amusing! You have a new subscriber. :)
One thought - given the tracker can do 2 way communication, you could have the tracker ping location every 10 minutes only, until a button press on the transceiver which then radically decreases the interval between location broadcast - it will stretch battery, but let you get close to the "10 minutes old" location before going to high precision / high frequency. (I assume the dog won't move more than 1 km in 10 minutes, typically).
Funny you should mention that. Working on just that kind of thing (plus a bunch more changes) right now. Where were you 3 years ago mate?
Coffee mode is genius naming!
How many videos from your channel should I watch to make a LoRkEnergy Tracker?
All of them of course ;)
Will there be a part 4? Possibly attempt to make one as small as an airtag?
Yes, there is a part 4 coming.
Thanks for this!
I plan to get some sort of network going in my area...Glenoe - Highlands, for people, dogs (Meg the Colliewobble is eaily enticed by deer n birds) and me (when out running and loss of mobile signal). We're surrounded by mountains so entirely possible that repeaters on solar could be placed on neighbouring tops hopefully giving large coverage?!
Coming to this project with absolutely bugger all knowledge of coding so having to scrabble between sites for parts list/code. Good to know its possible though.
Good luck. Let me know how the mountaintop repeaters work out.
Are you a Ham?
We've been doing this since the 1990s. APRS. Minus the internet side which came later. Bob - WB4APR created most of it.
RIP Bob! He passed a month or so ago. Retired from the Navy. Worked for NASA. Worked with John Glenn at times. Built satellites and designed numerous electronic devices. We lost a GREAT Ham when he went SK!
My question is 433mhz? Looked a little short for 6.5 inch ground plane.
I believe it's a 100mw version for 433mhz. Will chew up battery faster. 10sec beacon seems way to often but with that short a range 10 sec probably a good idea. Give a better bread crumb trail too. But just to locate you could reduce the beacon time, use directional antenna and or setup more gateways.
My goal is to get a APRS tracker small enough for a drone. They make some that are fairly small but still to bulky for a small drone. Even a DJI Air2S it's still a little bulky. Plus I need to check about harmonics / intermod. Some will only reduce to 500mw which is probably more than needed.
So how did this work out?
Yeah, still working on it. It's 915Mhz. I haven't used anything but the RFM95 so far. I should look into higher power ones at some point. Currently working on miniaturization. Wish me luck.
@@dork3nergy yeah mini is the tough part! Ive got Ham APRS trackers and Walkie talkies but they are BIG! They make one now thats pretty small. 40 grams i think. 1 watt and built in GPS plus other sensors but its $200!
The cheapest thing is 4G LTE tracker. Its Its only 40 grams, $30 plus a $5 monthly subscription. A Ham on ebay sells them for Drones.
But id much rather be able to see my tracker on the Ham APRS map on my PC and not rely on a subscription.
Have you looked at any of the expresslrs hardware. It would combine the esp32 and the Lora board and antenna. The you would only need the battery and charge controller. I was thinking about using that to build exactly what you did but haven't gotten around to it yet.
I had not looked into that system. First glance it seems interesting. I did not see a GPS built into those units but I may have missed it. You might also need to create your own firmware to transmit GPS data instead of flight controller info. The range might also be much smaller for a ground based system...once something is up in the air, the line of sight increases dramatically. Let me know if you do try this, I'd be interested in your results.
I've seen the ExpressLRS floating around the FPV groups, but I hadn't taken a serious look as I haven't been flying much lately. However, after looking at what it can do and the tiny size, I'm very impressed! ExpressLRS is based on SX127x hardware combined with an ESP8285, ESP32 or STM32 MCU using LoRa modulation, same as ImmersionRC Ghost and Crossfire. I didn't realize these systems were using LoRa. It looks as if you could simply take an ExpressLRS receiver, gps, battery (& possibly charger) to make a tiny tracker. Firmware would have to be written and it appears that ExpressLRS is all open source on github. I also see that it'll run on R9 hardware, which I have laying around. I might have to look into this hardware as it's already half-built for you...
@@dork3nergy Just put the 'ground station' on a quadcopter, problem solved :)
I like your energy 😊
Hi, would you be able to share the code for the XIAO? I am having a great time working on this! Thanks for sharing :)
Hey @scott glad you're digin' it. I put the code I used for the XIAO in the dogtracker2 repositiory : github.com/dork3nergy/DogTracker2
It's is poorly commented but should get you started. The XIAO has an annoying habit of clearing the EEPROM memory when you upload code so just be aware that you need to write a default config to the device every time you push new code.
@@dork3nergy Thanks so much for taking time to upload. Will be giving it a try :)
Do you have the software file you wrote available?
For the android app:
github.com/dork3nergy/AndroidLoRaMapper
Here are the new ESP32/Arduino Files
github.com/dork3nergy/DogTracker2
Hello again! I have problem with my gps data. Its not send the data . I read artikel on google and got the gps can work with lora together. I test your code and lora can work but its not send the data gps, how can I save data gps then transmit to lora? Please help mee....Iam stuck...
Make a simple sketch to just read GPS data. You can use the example from the GPS library you are using. It could be there is no data because the GPS has not connected to the satellites or it could be your wiring is wrong.
@@dork3nergy thanks for replying, i realized where i was wrong was not using the time range, so when the power supply was given gps and lora worked together which made my arduino unable to complete the task, in advance i am very grateful to you.
respect from me..
cats are the real chalenge
So yah gonna superglue that tracker to the kid once he leaves for college ?
I'm assuming Bill Gates has already injected a tracker into the boy.
can you please update your repo on github with all the code?
You're right. I should do that. I'll put that in the queue. The new gateway software is in microPython now and works really well.
Here ya go. Hope this helps you out.
github.com/dork3nergy/DogTracker2
I wonder what kind of range it would get if it's thrown 200 ft up a tower.
I think quite a bit. Let me know if you get one up that high.
@@dork3nergy I know old 900mhz wireless can go up to 5 miles with good antennas, but we actually needed better signals then what this would require. Same frequency though and power output so should be pretty good.
Why not just use the helium network, if it is available in your area
i went searching for part 4... just watched all 3 in one go....LOL
I think part 4 might be sooner rather than later. Stay tuned.
Can i made 2 or 3 nodes for 1 gateway?
I wan't try this for 2 or 3 gps module using for 1 gateway , is that posible? Soryy my language so bad. Piss haha, by the way your video is cool, i hope you answer my question..
Yes. Sure can. There is a possibility that your node transmissions will collide however which will garble the message. Working on that right now.
@@dork3nergy glad to hear it, please make a video so i can learn it. Thanks for the answer it was very helpful
I do want to track a cat!