Dear all
I am a biologist based in the UK and I am studying bird migration and bird navigation. General issue is as follows. We would like to track birds globally for affordable budgets. We have devices which can track birds and send data remotely but they are expensive and bulky. There are less expensive devices which for example collect geomagnetic field data (magnetic field strength aka intensity gives you approx latitude) or light-intensity data every 3 min for 12 months or so (sunrise/sunset gives a coarse longitude and day-length gives a rough latitude proxy) but all data are saved in flash memory on such devices and one needs to re-trap birds twice (to deploy so called geologger and then to download the data) which is pain in the back and demands lots of manpower and efforts.
So I am now developing a device to communicate my collected data (e.g. light level measurements sampled every 3 min for example) remotely over SigFOX (IoT) network. This way I would probably have much more success with getting data back and that would demand less efforts. Once the birds has made a round - wintering sites in the UK where device is deployed -> breeding on the continent - coming back to wintering in the UK again in a year -> data are dumped on the internet.
But to to able to use SigFOX infrastructure I need to marry Moteino and SigFOX friendly modules
More about SigFOX technology here
http://www.instructables.com/id/Introducing-LoRa-/step3/SIGFOX-network-based-IoT-rival-/
http://makers.sigfox.com/
As a platform I would like to use Moteino but I think SigFOX does not support RFM transceivers yet. Therefore now I am looking for modules that can fit on Moteino footprint and is compatible with SigFOX Ultra Narrow Band technology. I am asking SigFOX support
Aparently those companies produce SigFOX friendly modules
https://partners.sigfox.com/companies/module-maker?or[categories][0]=module-maker&q=&limit=48&page=0
but any other information would be helpful as well.
Any ideas? I would appreciate any information on that.
Best regards
Dmitry
From a quick look around, it looks like sigfox compatible modules are being made by lots of smaller companies. Just as example here: https://partners.sigfox.com/products/arm-nano
This is an RF module, there are surely others with integrated MCUs, such a solution may be all you need.