By David Szondy
October 23, 2013
If you've ever wondered where you left the laptop or how your dog came home smelling like a frog pond, then a GPS tracking device might seem like a good idea. The trick is to find one small enough to be practical and doesn't need its batteries replaced every day. The Retrievor RET-100 is a self-contained, solar-powered GPS tracker no wider than a US quarter that is looking to find a way to market via a crowdfunding campaign. Full story here: Retrievor
Comments
It looks great, but how is it going to work I am still not sure off. And the cost for this also seems to be higher.
Labortimetracker
Haha, you're right. I'm not fully awake yet.
I'm talking about the design you were talking about above, and the one I posted 3 posts up. It's not influences by RF, but if you have multiple power regulators and a charging circuit on the board less than an inch from it, as well as a battery strapped to the bottom, good luck with the interference.
Why would the magnetometer need to be separated? Is is influenced by RF?
I've only used APM 2.0 on a quad and never had issues with the mag (no longer in possession of APM either), so I don't have much experience with it.
Of course, you'd have to use this as just a GPS and use a separate external mag somewhere else on the frame, but if you have something big enough to use this with no real penalty, then I think you can make that work :)
@Muhammad: Like the idea :) you could use a >1c discharge 1s lipo on the bottom and a voltage regulator + charging circuit on the board, with power cables as well as the normal interface. As for the cellphone, use this with anything as simple as an arduino nano (or a built into the main board ATmega chip with arduino codebase) to turn on the cell, establish connection, send a quick text (most likely to multiple recipients) and make sure it sent, then shut back off. after 10 minutes, have it send out again, then shut off again. It would be a bit heavy, but for a large plane like a techpod or an X8, it would be well worth it. Pluch, the price would not bee too much at all :)
Actually, this IS ideal for the uav market! Self powered, small and light! Just a pity it costs more than my drone.
Right. In my first comment I was suggesting what I described in my second comment, but built on the back of the 3DR GPS module. So there's be a cellular radio, antenna, Li battery and µC right next to the uBlox and magnetometer.
Of course in reality, there isn't much space there, unless you were to double deck PCBs...
@Pieter: The disconnection of the cable wouldn't disable the tracker. I don't think I described it very well.
I guess you can think of it this way: Take the little tracker you posted earlier in this thread. That is sealed and independent. Now imagine you can plug APM into it and grab serial strings for regular GPS use. If that cable snags, say, in a crash, your APM will not have GPS, but the tracker will still be functional, as its battery and celllar radio are on the same board/in the same package as the GPS.
Does that make sense? I'm not very good at describing things...
Just wondering what happened to their first campaign. As far as I can see, both campaigns are almost identical while the first one received <$2k and second one received > $40k. May be because they are using the referral program? http://www.indiegogo.com/projects?utf8=%E2%9C%93&filter_title=R...
-
1
-
2
-
3
of 3 Next