1. Dongle Database and GUI for Managing
Unique Bird Tag IDs
Introduction
Our project is a Dongle, database and GUI for Managing Unique Bird Tag IDs. It is an interdisciplinary project
including Biology and ECE fields. Our team has 4 members and we are responsible for the ECE part.
The flow chart below denotes our system’s working process, the parts with red mark are what we have achieved.
First of all, we developed a USB dongle containing a receiver to detect tag codes and a GPS receiver to record
location. As for the tag part, we designed a new tag with smaller solar beeper which can utilize the solar energy
more efficiently. In addition, we also extended and refined the GUI and its interaction with the cloud-based database.
After the project is finished, field biologists can use this device with a laptop computer to capture tag codes, times
and locations as they are deployed, along with species and band number of the animals being tagged. Whenever a
tag ID is recovered through RF communication in the field, similar data will be recorded and stored to the cloud-
based database. It is a very meaningful project for protecting the endangered birds. What’s more, this project can
also be applied to other endangered animals.
GUI: Talk to User and Tag
GUI’s working process flow chart:
GUI’s interface:
Dongle: Receive Tag Info
We would like to thank our advisors and friends:
We thank Professor Joe Skovira and David Winkler for their constructive suggestions for this project. Their specific and sincere
advice is the catalyst to make the project going toward the right direction and becoming better.
We thank Rich Gabrielson for his patient instructions on detailed technical issues and continuous encouragement to us.
We also thank other friends like Kevin, Marshal, Dan and Taylor. They helped quite a lot; without their useful and sincere helps,
there is no way that we can make this project so meaningful and amazing! we really appreciate it!
Tag: Send RF Signal
The RF tag is designed to be attached to bird in the natural environment. Every time the bird flies by a base station, the tag
would send signals to base stations using solar energy. A tag has to be small and light in weight so that it wouldn't
affect a bird. But one of the problems of the existing tags is that they often lack energy and the signals they send
out are not strong enough. So we redesigned the tag so that the tag could use the solar energy more efficiently.
The PCB design and schematic of the tag:
The image of the real tag:
Acknowledgements
We made some improvements for GUI part:
1. The formats of birds’ band numbers differ from area to area, so we added a dropdown menu for users to
choose the area on the login interface.
2. The GUI can check the input information in all of the fields for security reasons, and save the information locally
or generate json file if there is Internet connection.
3. At present, the users could review and edit birds’ information before submitting it to database.
Contacts
Di Jiang: dj327@cornell.edu; Jinghan Du: jd855@cornell.edu;
Lei Zhang: lz392@cornell.edu; Rui Meng: rm879@cornell.edu.
Dongle design flow chart:
Dongle(version 1) :
We connected the Si1060, GPRS module, USB port adapter together so the Dongle could receive and check the
tag ID and send it to laptop. The system looks like this:
Dongle(version 2) :
The first Dongle we designed was inconvenient to operate because there are so many separate big components;
therefore, we picked out the crucial parts and integrated them into a board of USB size. We redesigned the PCB
Dongle board and now it becomes much smaller:
Besides, it was combined with the raspberry pi so the base station is more functional:
Conclusion
1. We programmed on Si1060 to let it listen to certain radio frequency constantly.
2. We configured the Si1060, GPS module and USB port adapter correctly so that they could work coordinately.
3. We redesigned the dongle board by combining the 3 parts together in a smaller board in Eagle. We had several
samples and tested them. After some adjustments, the dongle we have now is small and highly integrated.
Users could use it much more easily.
4. We created a GUI to receive input from the dongle. We applied Regular Expression to check the format of tag ID
before reading the information into the GUI, only the tag ID of right format can be read into GUI. Besides, the
formats of other fields in the GUI can also be checked. The GUI is adaptive to both Windows and Mac OS.
5. Users could choose areas in login interface, after logging in, users could view and edit tag data before
submitting to the database or saving locally, depending on the Internet condition.
6. We redesigned the tag board so that the new tag would be more efficient on utilizing solar energy, without
changing too much on the tag size and tag weight.