i have heard a rumor,
there is a new ,
credit card size,
not expensive
perfect meshtastic preinstalled nrf52
working out of the box
sensor/tracker solution coming soon !
so maybe dont order more capsules at this moment,
before these energy problems are solved…
nrf52 will make a much better tracker than exp32…
My “in theory” 180day battery life cow tracker is being litterally field tested now.
Updates its position every two hours over our meshtastic network.
looks really good 
you can build a bit smaller, if you use rak19003 baseboard
The rak19003 will be used when version 2.0 is made. And anyhow a cow can easily carry that little weight. 
Its the battery size that makes the biggest bulk of the tracker. Two 18650 cells at 3400mah each. Depending on what the real life power consumption turns out to be I might go with a single 21700 5000mah cell or a square lipo cell for the next one. I need at least 180ish days of battery life as getting the tracker off the cow to charge it is not always that easy. 
With a rak19003 and a small lipo pack it could easily be made small enough for a cat or dog. Add a small solar cell and the battery life would be extended even further.
this is a very nice node, you built there !
how many cows do you have?
if it is in “tracker role” only broadcasing once an hour, you can think about adding a tiny solar panel.
mabe a 20mA solar panel would be enough. 20mmx40mm will be enough and could fit onto the node itself , or on the collar. i must be exposed to a bit of sunshine thou
https://de.aliexpress.com/item/1005004689060279.html
Its my friends farm. Trying to get him off-grid with his trackers. Running gsm trackers now and there is spotty coverage around there.
Already thought of solar panels, but the cows rub up against all kinds of things so not sure a panel would survive. Thinking of ways to put a tiny one to cover at least the standby current of the rak board. (aprox 1mAh) could have that one a bit protected on the short end. May be incorporated in V2.0.
yes. maybe solar is not even necessary,
if the node runs for the whole season… .
I am trying to make a small node with the RAK 4630 on an RAK19003 and the ATGM336H GPS module. I cant for the life of me get it to work! When I look at the serial log it says…
DEBUG | ??:??:?? 2 [GPS] Probing for GPS at 9600
WARN | ??:??:?? 4 [GPS] Failed to find UBlox & MTK GNSS Module using baudrate 9600
As I said, I am using the mini base (RAK 19003) and have it wired as follows:
GPS - RAK 19003
VCC - J6 pin 1 VDD (3.3V)
GND - J6 pin 2 GND
TX - J7 pin 1 RX1
RX - J7 pin2 TX1
The Meshtastic Position settings are as follows:
GPS Receive GPIO - Pin 33
GPS Transmit GPIO - Pin 34
GPS EN GPIO - Unset
Running firmware 2.3.6 on a RAK 4630 Core
Any ideas why it isn’t working?
From what I can see the module you have only outputs data with Nmea protocol. Meshtastic uses the newer Ublox protocol.
China clone gnss modules often have a an incomplete firmware compared “genuine” modules and often doesnt output a full Ublox protocol.
I really recommend getting the RAK gnss module that slots into the baseboard. It is completely plug and play and you will also be able to shut down the module to save power in tracking mode. See earlier posts in this thread.
Thanks so much for the reply here.
The thing is I see this module being used and it looks like it is supported. I have also used this module with the heltecv3 and it works with no special configuration. Maybe the firmware for the wisblock is different enough from the heltec and this isn’t meaningful. 
I am wondering if I am just missing some configuration detail.
Any other ideas would be great. Again, thank you for the response.
@IFA2891 I was able to solve my problem. It was mostly an issue because Version E of the 19003 is different and not well documented. But I also had to reassign some pins. Thanks for responding and trying to help.
No worries. 
Happy you figured it out. 
Do we have an option to set a GPS lock timeout in Tracker and powersave mode so if no lock is aquired in a set time it will power down again and try again later?
This would save a lot of batterypower when the cow is lying down with the tracker underneath her.
i think that was included in some older firmware some time ago (fix time),
but that was removed and fix intervall is used instead.
maybe with the right settings in fix interval and broadcast interval , you get the desired result (sleep, even if htere is no fix)… please report here :
Total NOOB here on trying to set up the same for our dogs. I have a T-Beam, Pax-tracker and Hellcat, including the meshtestic app. The tracker only seems to push gps location to meshtestic if within bluetooth range of my phone. I am convinced i am making a thinking hat mistake,… but the head is glitching 
Any help getting it to work would be appreciated !
the meshtastic device needs to have its active own GPS receiver.
if it does not, it will just use the gps data that are provided by phone over BLE.
T-beam should have functional gps ! the other devices i dont know.
so if you disable "provide postion " in your app,
but set gps to “enable” for meshtatic device in config menu,
the devices should start sending their own (not the phones) position into the mesh.
you can see that, if your devices does not show any gps data in your phone, but then after some time for the gps fix, shows some gps position. if it did not get that position by phone (disabled in app) then its functional. (the same if it shows changing pgs data, when moving
for a dog tracker:, there a no esp32 devices that have long battery runtime, the best option atm is building a gps tracker on RAK basis, but some new products are going to be relased in some time… the heltec capusle v3 is unusable atm, because very short battery runtime, this one need a firmware update to enable some real sleep energy saving between the gps-work times…
Hi everyone, I got into Meshtastic specifically for the idea of building a dog tracker. We tried some off the shelf products that require cellular coverage and I wasn’t that impressed. I now have a couple of T-Echos and a Heltec capsule to test the proof of concept as it were. The Heltec would work if it had battery life of at least two hours. As it is it’s useless. I was wondering if anyone had pulled the guts out of a T-echo and put it into a more suitable housing? The RAK stuff looks ideal but hard to get hold of and I still need an appropriate housing for fitting to a dog collar. Hmm maybe it’s time to buy a 3D printer…
Anyway, subscribed to this channel to see what folk come up with.
These are exactly my thoughts. I am using the Capsule for short walks, but the battery is just not there.
I have a RAK 19003 laid out in a linear fashion. The a plan to design a collar with two pockets. One that has the base board on top and the other for battery to hang underneath. That is the weight of the battery will keep the antennas pointing up. Will trying printing in flexible TPU first (as i have some). My ambition is much greater than my design and electronic competence, so happy to collaborate.
if you build with a rak19003 its very easy, just stick the parts togehter 4-5 little screws and ready.
no electronic competence needed, just creativity to design a waterproof housing
The thing is, come up with something decent and you will have something that competes with the commercial offerings out there without many of their drawbacks. I know of a few folk who are waiting to hear from me if the capsule was viable as they are holding off from buying pawfit, tractive etc.by the way, where is everyone getting their RAK boards from?