AquaMote

Abstract

Tagging animals with sensors is a powerful approach to acquire critical information about the behavioural ecology of free-living animals, which ultimately can provide data to inform best practice in conservation efforts. Sensor tags for such deployments need long lifetimes and incorporate multiple sensors, especially location because space use can contextualize behavior. The tag size needs to be minimal so as not to affect the activities of the animal. Aquatic animals in particular present challenges due to lack of wireless communication and water-proofing. Taking these points into consideration we have designed Aquamote: an ultra-low power, tiny sensor tag (20 x 29 mm2) which integrates accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, depth sensor, GPS and BLE. Our poster will showcase the performance of AquaMote and highlight our design decisions to reduce its size and power consumption.