Yesterday
it was announced
that Newbury Electronics is to
start a new electronic design services division called Newbury Innovations, and
that the team transferring to the new entity had already designed some
interesting electronics, including tags for tracking wild animals.
Here is some more on those tags.
They were created for the Swansea
Live Animal Monitoring (SLAM) group, led by Professor Rory Wilson at Swansea
University, are the size of a stamp, and weigh 3g.
Dr Mark Holton of SLAM approached
Newbury Electronics with initial designs in the spring. From this, Holton and
the firm developed the concept to get the smallest PCB that would still work
with multiple sensors – see below.
To date Newbury Electronics has
supplied around 200 of the sensor/loggers along with several dozen bespoke GPS
logger, and timed release modules.
“We
have been working on data analysis algorithms which, together with these
devices, will certainly place us as a significant competitor within the animal
research market place, said Holton, who is also MD of Swansea University
spin-out Wildbyte Technologies.
The list of animals so far fitted
with the trackers includes: badgers, beavers, camels, eagles, vultures,
condors, whale sharks, turtles and humans – the latter to aid psychology and
sports injury recovery through movement analysis, said Newbury.
Most recently was monitoring the
movement of turtles off the west coast of Africa.
In this case the sensors detect
movement and heading from accelerometer and geomagnetic sensors, along with
light, temperature and depth – sensors are either on-board or blugged into the
board.
Up to 75 million data points
recorded over three weeks has been analyses to give an insight into behaviour
under (movement and orientation, and depth) and at the surface (+GPS) including
duration of dives, the number of breaths taken and foraging patterns at depth.
‘Daily
Diary’ tag- Weight: ~2g +battery +housing)
- Size ~27x26x8mm
- Accelerometer: 3axis 13bit resolution +/-16g
(3.9mg/LSB)
- Magnetometer: 3axis 12bit resolution +/-1.3Ga
- Thermometer: -40 to +85°C (0.1°C)
- Air pressure: 300 to 1,100hPa (0.01hPa steps) Not
active in sealed housing
- Depth sensor: down to 200m (resolution ~1m)
- Light – light dependent resistor (12bit) for dark to
daylight transition
- logging rate: 60Hz max
Sourec:-
