It’s been a while since I’ve visited this project, but I’ve discovered that the Lora chips I was using are now being fully integrated into the ESP8266 Arduino boards. There even producing ones that have an OLED screen installed as shown below.

This now means I am able to reduced the size of the tracker considerable. I’ve done away with the custom printed circuit board and just gone with some simple wires soldered straight to the individual components. The result is below, a simple ESP8266 chip, no OLED on this one, just a GPS receiver as this will act as the tracking unity for the DOG. It will transmit the signal over LORA back to the chip above.

The unit will also include 2 LED lights for showing power and also when a GPS signal is received as well as as simple on/off switch. I’ve house the components in a 3D printed box. The work in progress is below.

Just running a few test to see how long the unity will last and how far the range of the LORA signal will reach. But first tests are promising with the signal reaching at least half a mile through some buildings, so should reach much longer out in the open. The unit has been on for 6 hours so far as well so battery life is also looking promising.

I still need to work on the housing for the receiver, but it will only need to house a battery and Lora Chip. As you can see from the image below though it’s receiving the GPS location data fine.

Its also connected to WiFi so it transmits the data via a web service to store the last location over the Dog in a database. Out and about it will use a persons phone as a personal hot spot to send the data to the cloud. Then a simple page like this (Link to Dog tracker Map) can be viewed to see where the dog is.