BOTSWANA
Spotted hyena
With wildlife ecologist Rohan Wadhwa (University of Georgia), studying movement and human–wildlife conflict. Three weeks of continuous nocturnal acoustic data.
Research questions you can now answer
GPS tells you where an animal goes. CollarID tells you what it’s doing, hearing, and breathing — at full duty cycle, for the length of the deployment.
Was the hyena running or standing still when it vocalized?
Synchronized audio, motion, and GPS on the same animal — behavior comes from direct measurement, not from guessing it out of movement alone.
What rare calls are we missing with triggered recorders?
Continuous field audio captures the unusual events alongside the common ones — the training data triggered recorders can’t collect.
How does wildfire smoke change free-ranging animal behavior?
Particulate, gas, temperature, and humidity on the same timeline as movement and vocalization — exposure and its consequences in one file.
No other wildlife collar hears the field
CollarID’s acoustic system — tuned with acoustic experts at MIT and in industry — records what existing platforms miss entirely. A few clips straight off the collar:
Spotted hyena
0:00
Hyena running & vocalizing
0:00
Cow bawling
0:00
Cow mooing & birds chirping
0:00
All-terrain vehicle
0:00
Plane overhead
0:00
One animal, many signals
Every subsystem is captured on the same timeline, from the same collar — and any of them can be switched off, so the collar is tailored to each study’s questions and power budget.
Audio
Motion
GPS
Air quality
Humidity
Temperature
Light
Engineered for the field
A conventional research collar in this category weighs 1–2 kg — most of it battery. CollarID Mk II runs 150 g, on solar, at fix rates several times finer than convention — and it’s built to take the abuse of the field: lion and hyena bites, and pressurized-water washdown.
150 g
Total weight, with multi-modal sensors and continuous bioacoustics — vs 1–2 kg typical for year-long collars.
Adaptive
A context-aware GPS fix rate that adjusts to live activity patterns — field-validated at a fixed 5-minute cadence on free-grazing cattle, several times finer than the ~4 h convention.
Lion-proof
Polycarbonate cover and machined aluminum base, validated with FEA against lion and hyena bite forces — and a gasket-sealed enclosure that survived repeated pressurized-water testing with no ingress.
Set it up from your phone, or your laptop
Connect over Bluetooth from your phone, or from a laptop in the browser. Choose what the collar records by day and by night, see how much sun that needs, and read back what it confirmed. Once the animal is out, the schedule can still be changed over the radio.
Hear from the collar without catching the animal
Every CollarID records to its own memory card. While it is out, it also reports in by radio, two ways.
An installed gateway
A box on a mast at camp. Collars within range report in on their own, and their positions and battery show up on your dashboard. About 10 km with a clear line of sight, less in thick bush.
The handheld receiver
Carry it and it hears your collars directly, no network needed, and points you to the animal or a dropped collar. A few kilometres with line of sight.
Encrypted when you want it
Turn on location protection and only receivers holding your key can read where your animals are.
Gateways are off-the-shelf hardware, and we help you set one up. Setting up a gateway →
CollarDT, in pilot: it knows when to let go.
A detachment mechanism now being piloted: release the collar on a schedule — or on command, through a paired MkII Mesh CollarID — no recapture, no darting. No CollarID required — it runs fully standalone on any collar, and pairing one adds remote control.
Works with
Any collar — standalone, no CollarID required
Release
Scheduled · remote trigger when paired with a MkII Mesh CollarID
Mass
135 g
Battery
4+ years
Reuse
Refurbishable between long-term deployments
Configure
From the web configurator, or through a paired CollarID (MkII Mesh version) — at schedule setup or remotely after deployment
Piloting now — ask about early access →
Deployed on a variety of species around the world
On wild and domestic animals across several continents. Deployments are ongoing, with many more about to begin alongside researchers around the world — and every one returns real data that refines the platform.
ALSO IN THE FIELDDomestic dogs in Indigenous communities in Kenya, with Stephanie Mitchell, doctoral candidate in Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Washington.
STARTING SOONWolves, horses, lions, deer and more hyenas, plus a few we’ve been asked not to mention yet. If your species isn’t on the list, write to us. It usually can be.
From an MIT Media Lab thesis to a field-proven platform
Designed by Patrick Chwalek, PhD, CollarID was developed at the MIT Media Lab in collaboration with Kioxia, MIT researchers, and in consultation with National Geographic and the wider conservation community. The Mk II builds on thousands of hours of field data — an optimized architecture, lower assembly cost, and a larger solar panel for extended autonomous operation.
Deploy CollarID
Researcher, conservation organization, or funder — we’d like to hear from you. Mk II collars are available for purchase. We quote per deployment, because the right setup depends on your species, your site and how many animals you are following, and we are available for a consult before you commit to anything: write to us with what you have in mind and we will come back with a plan and a quote.
Request a quoteField Notes
Occasional email updates on the firmware, the hardware, and what is coming next. Written by Patrick. Read past issues.