Pinguino GPS wildlife tracker

Based on a nice Eagle design (see attachment), using the PIC32MX440F256H 80 Mhz microcontroller, we need an Arduino compatible software suite (prepared with the Pinguino IDE) which will make the design function as a GPS wildlife tracker. It is necessary for our work as wildlife protection NGO.

Its intention is to have a continuous sleep and wake up cycle. During the wake up cycle the software should get a fast GPS fix, save the GPS data to a uSD card (logging) and fall asleep again. Once a day or once in 2 to more days the data needs to be send by means of GPRS or SMS (to be determined in a separate config file) to a server. The SMS option is important for areas where the GSM network does not have enough quality for GPRS data transmission. This config file is necessary anyway to have the possibility to change other setting like the server's address and APN. We have Telit python code which serves as a good example for what we want.

The frequency of saving data to the uSD card and sending these data from the uSD card to the server can be changed online through a set of PHP scripts. These PHP scripts are already functional. It means that the software will need to accept an incoming txt file with new settings. If there are no new settings on the server, then no file will be downloaded. This check will be done after the uploading of the data from the uSD card during the same client server connection. A MD5 checksum is necessary.

For uploading data there is already a good PHP server script to accept the uploaded data and save these in a MySQL database. It needs to be slightly adapted however, because this tracker will also sample data from a BMA180 accelerometer. These data need to be send as well. It needs to be determined for how long (1 - 5 seconds) this snapshot of X,Y and Z data needs to be to get an impression of the animals behaviour during GPS data sampling (e.g. is the animal asleep, swimming, running?).

The software has to be designed in such a way that it minimizes power use from the battery. By doing such the time of use in the field can be maximized. For easy change of the software later on for (additional) changes (e.g. with other sensors), we prefer to have it developed with available Arduino compatible libraries used within the Pinguino IDE.

Programación en C PHP

Nº del proyecto: #2740914

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