Docs / Datasheet
CollarID Mk II
A low-power, GPS-tracked wildlife monitoring collar for behavioural and environmental research — a multi-channel sensor suite with solar-augmented battery operation and dual BLE + LoRa/LoRaWAN radios. Data is logged to microSD on-device; summary statistics uplink over LoRa for in-deployment monitoring.
Built on a 3-board stack: a CPU board (MCU, sensors, SD, USB-C, audio), a top board (GPS, BLE, LoRa, charge management, power switch), and a flex board (PDM microphone, environmental sensor).
Physical & mechanical
Cover / base
Polycarbonate cover; machined anodized-aluminum base
Sealing
EPDM gasket compressed by six stainless perimeter screws. Bench testing: two cycles of pressurized warm-water spray (~55–65°C) with alkaline surfactant detergent — no ingress, no functional degradation.
Dimensions
87 mm L × 40 mm W × 24 mm tall (centre) / 31 mm (edges); length excludes flanged mounting ends
Mounting
M5 through-holes on each flanged end, 30 mm centre-to-centre
Weight
150 g
Ingress
Formal IPX certification planned
Temp range
Operating −20°C to +60°C; storage −40°C to +85°C
Power & battery
Battery
Li-ion / LiPo, 2.96 Wh, 2.8 V cutoff – 4.2 V full
Charging
USB-C at 400 mA (~0.5 C, 2-hour profile); solar boost charger on the same battery, tolerant of partial-shade canopy conditions
Hibernation
Enters hibernation at ≤10% SoC; wakes every 8 h to re-check and resumes above 20%. With solar, hibernating units self-recover in the field.
Architecture
Per-subsystem energy budget — radios, sensors, MCU duty cycles, file system, and peripheral wake/sleep each individually budgeted. The configurator’s Power tab exposes the same equation the firmware uses.
Field-validated
GPS fix + LoRaWAN uplink every 5 minutes, sustained for several consecutive months on a free-grazing cattle deployment. Achievable cadence depends on solar exposure, behaviour, and gateway coverage.
Wireless
Bluetooth Low Energy
Standard / use
BLE 5.x — schedule configuration and firmware updates via the configurator
Activation
Auto on fresh-SD boot, or magnet swipe over the paw-print LED at any time
LoRa / LoRaWAN
Bands
868 MHz & 915 MHz sub-GHz, build-time configurable. LoRaWAN presets (
US915, EU868, AU915) apply when running the LoRaWAN stack; carrier frequency is free in P2P mode.SF / BW / CR
SF7–SF12 · 125 / 250 / 500 kHz · 4/5, 4/6, 4/7, 4/8
Modes
LoRaWAN (Class A, OTAA or ABP) or peer-to-peer LoRa
GPS / GNSS
Constellations
Concurrent multi-GNSS — GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou; active patch antenna
TTFF
Cold start ≤30 s clear sky; hot start <5 s
Accuracy
≤1.5 m CEP open sky; time 30 ns RMS (used for RTC sync)
Sensors
Accelerometer
3-axis MEMS · ±2/±4 (default)/±8 g · 25–800 Hz ODR · 12-bit. ODBA / VeDBA on-device DSP planned.
Magnetometer
3-axis MEMS · ±50 gauss · 1.5 mGauss/LSB · doubles as the BLE-wake magnet detector
Environmental
Temperature, humidity, pressure (300–1100 hPa), gas/VOC resistance · BSEC2 on-device calibration
Particulate · opt
Optional add-on (not in stock config). Laser-scattering MEMS · PM1.0 / PM2.5 / PM10 · default 15-min duty cycle
Lux
Ambient light · clear + ALS (lux) · 16-bit, configurable gain & integration
Audio
Microphone
PDM digital MEMS · 100 Hz–80 kHz response (sensitive into ultrasonic)
Default sampling
16 kHz, 16-bit signed mono PCM (0–8 kHz Nyquist)
Ultrasonic
96 / 192 kHz sampling possible via custom firmware build — not exposed in the standard configurator
Storage & compute
Storage
microSD push-push, exFAT, tested to 2 TB, 4-bit SDIO. Recommended: industrial-grade Kioxia (field-validated).
MCU
32-bit Arm Cortex-M33 w/ FPU · 4 MB flash · 2.5 MB SRAM · RTC · separate BLE module
Firmware
Azure RTOS ThreadX + FileX. Web-based DFU (Chrome/Edge) over USB-C. Closed-source; protobuf definitions available on request.
Certifications & roadmap
End-product certification is in progress. FCC / IC / CE are TBD. Devices are provided for research use only and should not be operated in commercial deployments until certifications are finalised.
Drop-off
Automated release mechanism — in pilot testing
Satellite
Modular satellite-uplink node in development for deployments without LoRa gateway coverage
Rev B · current production hardware (Mk II)