UK using Cellular Tracking Technology Tags

General
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Dear all,

My name is Ben Dolan from West Midlands Ringing Group in the UK (on social media)

We were looking to tag Jack Snipe and monitor movements, but other groups had used Geo tags, which needed them to be re-caught and when 1 of these tags has been recovered out of 20 deployed the battery had failed.

So we wanted to look at other options available and that’s when I contacted David from Cellular Tracking Technologies and was recommended the Motus tag with expanded packs. These tags use public iPhones to ping off on movement.

At present we have deployed 5 of. The tags, which 3 have now pinged. One is currently in Belgium, another in Amsterdam and one is pinging locally.

It’s great to be able to monitor these via the website.

They are not perfect but seem to be delivering positive data, however it would be amazing if they pinged off android too.

I think we will look at extending the aerial on future tags to see if we can pick up more pings.It will be an interesting project moving forward but I really think the e expanded pack is definitely the way to go and I think in Canada and America where you have a good Motus set up, you will get pings off Motus and members of public phones .

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Hi all By coincidence I today attached my first BluBat+ tag to a Leisler’s bat in Kent (I have had another test tag in my car tracking my movements for a month. Pretty impressed. Gaps where not many phones ie rural areas when I have taken it on a run, but it does well on roads and urban areas. Will update when we get some results from the bat! Best wishes Fiona

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Hi Ben,

Wieland Heim in our working group (Migration Ecology, Uni Oldenburg) tags Jack Snipes with multisensor loggers in Germany. Maybe contact also him directly. I guess he’d be thrilled to learn also more about your project.

Cheers,

Heiko

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We found it worked well when driving around when having my phone turned off or blue tooth off, however has been sporadic when deployed.