RE: Low power mesh dissertation project.

Sigurd Hellesvik — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 09:59:13 GMT

Hi Andrew

When it comes to wireless technologies, range is key.
If the animals you want to track are indoors, Bluetooth Low Energy or Thread can be good protocols, as they have relatively short range.

However, if the animals are further apart, for example sheep in the field, they often will be too far apart for Bluetooth Low Energy or Thread to reach each other/ a hub.

For this use case, I would argue that LPWAN technologies would be better, such as LTE-M or NB-IoT.
Our nRF9160 has already been used for such cases, see our blog on Animal Tracking: Cellular IoT In The Field and Cellular IoT ear tag tracks health and location of farmed reindeer and other herding animals.

[quote user=""]can you advice me on how this might be done and what equipment and software I might need to do this. [/quote]

Hardware:
The Arduino Nano 33 should be fine for Bluetooth Low Energy or Thread, as it is based on the nRF52840.
What else do you want to know when you ask about equipment?

Software:
Since it is an Arduino, you should be able to program the Nano 33 using Arduino Studio and its framework.
For this case, you may get limited help from this forum, as we do not specialize in Arduino development.
An alternative would be to use our nRF Connect SDK, which supports the Arduino Nano 33.
To get started with the nRF Connect SDK, see Getting Started and nRF Connect for VS Code.

Does this answer your questions?

Regards,
Sigurd Hellesvik