A drowned ZoombaTracker™

All very well, this irrigation business, and jolly for Zoomba that she likes it a lot here, chasing rabbits, but not so great she returned all wet, with a malfunctioning ZoombaTracker™.

She rummages around the irrigation channels, and sticks her nose into the conduits, thus putting the ZoombaTracker™ in water. It is dry here. Very very dry, so this is something I had not taken into account.

Now and then the tracker gave a sign of life, but more often it did not. Lucky my soldering iron and spare parts had just arrived with the car, so I had a spare ZoombaTracker™ and some Arduino Trinkets.

The SIM still worked, so did the LoNet GSM/GPS, but not the lipo-battery. Even after days of drying it cannot be re-charged. That is eleven euros down the irrigation channels. (Update! The battery is fine again.)

With the spare battery still malfunctions. Grmbl. (And worse.) Then the remaining part to swap is the Arduino. Screw-glue-desolder-solder-curse-grmll-sweat. But, it's working.

And it fits the little plastic Oropax box a lot better, with shorter wires, shorter battery wires, and the clever use of Tesa black tape.

ZoombaTracker™ IoT

This is the fruit of last month's work: the ZoombaTracker™, GrannyFinder™, CarTracer™, etc.

Remember Zoomba? Of course you do. Well, she runs off, which is worrying for city dwellers. The ZoombaTracker™ is a wearable IoT "Internet of Things" thingie consisting of a GSM+GPS module, the smallest Arduino I could find, a LiPo battery and two antennae in a little (match)box, that will be attached to Zoomba's collar.

GPS trackers for pets are readily available, but they usually come with a subscription service that costs a lot of money, and I don't like that. The ZoombaTracker™ is different. It can be controlled by sending it a simple SMS, and it will return the GPS location of the device as an answer. So, at the cost of one SMS you will know where Zoomba, granny or your car are.

The device is designed to be sleeping mostly, to save the battery. Current testing show the device will work up to 50 hours on a charged 550mAh LiPo battery, which is not too bad. The tracker is active 08:00 till midnight, so 16 hours a day. It should work two days on a charge. Perhaps removing the 3 LEDs will further decrease power consumption.

The ZoombaTracker™ will send an SMS when the battery is low, to remind you to charge or change the battery.

Here is an example: some commands, an SMS with a link to Google Maps, and the result.


(Gw=send GPS location as soon as fix is obtained, Mg=send in Google Maps format, Gf=force send GPS location NOW, G0=GPS off)

The complete device. It will be attached to a dog collar next, and tested in the wild.