Sensor-laden PCBs enable data-rich animal tracking

The lightweight, robust trackers have been fitted to a range of animals, including badgers, beavers, camels, giraffes, eagles, vultures, condors, whale sharks and even people (aiding psychology, and sports injury recovery, through movement analysis).

The most recent project aims to tag and monitor the movement of turtles off the west coast of Africa, in conjunction with Dr Rebecca Scott, a Future Ocean researcher at GEOMAR (based in Germany).

Sensors on the trackers detect micro-movement and heading from accelerometer and geomagnetic sensors, along with a number of other on-board and plug-in modules for light, temperature and depth information. For turtles, the resulting data set, often approaching 75m data points over a period of 3 weeks, gives a unique insight into their behaviour both under (movement and orientation, and depth) and at the water surface (+GPS), including duration of dives, the number of breaths taken and foraging patterns at depth.

These measures and other observations provide scientists with an abundance of breath-taking data for future analysis. To date Newbury Electronics has supplied approximately 200 of these sensor logging devices along with several dozen bespoke GPS logger, and timed release modules.

"We first approached Newbury Electronics with our initial designs back in the spring. Since then they have worked closely with us to design the circuit boards in the most compact way possible but in a way which still enables us to combine information from multiple sensors.  We have trialled different designs from several different manufacturers, but Newbury Electronics' products are of a higher quality, the company is far more responsive and more competitively priced," said Dr Holton, MD, Wildbyte Technologies. “We have been working hard on data analysis algorithms which, together with these quality devices, will certainly place us as a significant competitor within the animal research market place.”

Philip King, MD, Newbury Electronics, added; "This is another exciting illustration of how our bespoke engineering skills can be harnessed to provide hitherto unknown data and information. In the past 12 months PCBs from Newbury Electronics have been used in an unique art installation, a ground breaking medical diagnostic tool, oceanography research buoys and in the latest consumer electronics product, the Touch Board. I believe this is an exciting time for the electronics industry and for UK manufacturers like ourselves who have proving themselves in a global marketplace."