What it is
Volunteer trappers on Banks Peninsula walk long lines to check traps that are mostly empty. A small sensor that reports when a trap has gone off would send those hours to the traps that actually need attention — and, over a season, build a record of where predators move.
Who asked for it
Nobody yet. That’s honest, and it’s the first task. This gets co-designed with the people who will carry it up a hill, or it doesn’t get built. If they tell us the idea is wrong, we’ll build what they need instead.
What would decide the design
- Power: it must survive a Banks Peninsula winter with little sun (LiFePO4 cells, a safer lithium chemistry, not ordinary lithium-ion).
- Range: no mobile coverage in the gullies, so a long-range, low-power radio (LoRa) and a well-placed receiver.
- Expendable: cheap enough to lose one.
- Toughness: rain, salt air, frost, UV, curious animals, being dropped.
- Repair: a volunteer in a raincoat should be able to fix it with one hand.
- Honesty: a sensor that cries wolf is worse than no sensor. We’ll publish the false-alarm rate.
Three levels
- Beginner: a printed mechanical flag that pops up when the trap fires. No electronics, visible from the track.
- Maker: a microcontroller, a switch, a LoRa radio and a small solar panel in a printed case.
- Expert: power budgets, radio range in real gullies, data pipelines, false-positive rates.
Where it stands
An idea and a list of questions. The plan is a six-part film series, Trap Tech, from the first conversation to a winter in the field with ten traps.
Les plans sont gratuits — the plans are free.