WTF - Walking Turtle Finder v1

Description

If you own a turtle and allow it to walk in the garden during the daytime, you may have trouble finding it in the evening.

A possible solution would be something like a on-turtle beacon that can be remotely controlled to make sound. If you hear that sound you will probably find your turtle much faster.

Details

The essence of the implementation consisted in two devices: a receiver with a buzzer, which is fixed on the turtle, and a transmitter with a button, which works as a remote control. When the button is pressed, the transmitter sends pulses to the receiver and the pulses on its output contact open the transistor that powers the buzzer.

Project Logs

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The devices cases v1
Danya0x07 • 10/10/2020 at 21:04 • 0 comments

At first, since I don't have a 3D printer and a suitable transmitter box yet, I made its body in the most awkward way: wrapped the board with electrical tape (but without covering the battery itself so it can be easily pulled out).

And the receiver body was made of ..... a thread spool! Yes, such a silicon spool can be cleverly cut and turned into a device case. It looks like a well-designed backpack for a turtle. Black stretch bands are fixed in the case with metal braces, and their length can be adjusted to suit a specific turtle.
Ignore the switch - it's an old photo.
The switch issue
Danya0x07 • 10/10/2020 at 20:41 • 0 comments

The first prototype uses the FS1000A radio modules. That is the cheapest but not a reliable option because these modules are very sensitive to power voltage stability, so there was a trouble with the switch: the device worked bad and it was very difficult to determine, why. But the issue was in the switch - it's replacement to a simple breadboard wires fixed the bug.

The switch had to be replaced with breadboard wires.
The battery issue
Danya0x07 • 10/10/2020 at 20:38 • 0 comments

At first I wanted to power the receiver from a CR2302 battery, but its power was not enough for the DC-DC step-up converter to supply a stable voltage for the radio module, so I had to use one AAA battery instead.

The CR2032 battery was not enough for the DC-DC step-up converter used in the project

View all 3 project logs

Discussions

Bharbour wrote 10/14/2020 at 16:26

A friend of mine has a large turtle that escapes fairly regularly. He epoxied a tag with his phone number to the turtle's shell, and so far he has gotten the turtle back each time. He lives in a suburban area though, so there are enough people around. In a rural area the tag might not work so well.

Are you sure? yes | no

EK wrote 10/14/2020 at 15:51

Go turtle go! Would be so cool to see where the turtles wander to and if there's any patterns if you add GPS to it.

Are you sure? yes | no

Danya0x07 wrote 10/10/2020 at 22:07

There are much noise in the city at 433 MHz, so the receiver often spontaneously starts to buzz, but in the countryside there shouldn't be such a problem. (Currently the device is going to be used in the countryside).

Are you sure? yes | no

WTF - Walking Turtle Finder v1

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Description

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The devices cases v1

The switch issue

The battery issue

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