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Cattle Monitoring Collar (Smart Livestock Tracker)

IoT wearable bovine health tracker & data pipeline

ESP32 MicrocontrollerC++ (Arduino)PythonI2C Communication ProtocolOLED Display (128x64)GPS Protocol
ROTORS & KEIC Foundation InternshipAnimated On-Device OLED UIMulti-Sensor Telemetry Pipeline
Source

The problem

Developed during an internship at ROTORS in collaboration with the KEIC Foundation (KR Mangalam University). Livestock management in off-grid rural regions suffers from lack of health metrics and live location tracking, making early illness detection and theft prevention nearly impossible.

We needed to design a low-power, wearable collar prototype with on-device telemetry and an remote monitoring dashboard.

Key decision

We chose the ESP32 for its built-in Wi-Fi/Bluetooth capabilities and low-power sleep modes. We integrated multiple digital sensors over I2C and OneWire, opting for local memory-buffered queue telemetry to prevent data loss in rural blind spots.

How it works

The hardware-software stack consists of:

  • Wearable Hardware (ESP32): Controls data collection in finalproject.ino. Interfaces with a MAX30100 (Heart Rate & SpO2), a DS18B20 (body temperature probe), and a Neo-6M GPS module. Power is regulated by a Li-ion battery via a boost converter.
  • Device UI: 128x64 I2C OLED display cycling through data screens (BPM, humidity, temperature comparisons, GPS coordinates, and animated status icons).
  • Ingestion & Dashboard: Python ingestion scripts (like geolocate.py) that parse incoming sensor payloads, store alert logs, and plot location coordinates on a web mapping dashboard.

Team Alpha Q: Aditya (Leader), Akash Sharma, Lakshya, Anurag. Mentorship: KEIC Foundation & K.R. Mangalam University.

Results

Built a fully wired, working breadboard prototype collar that cycles live health readings, formats location updates on an animated OLED display, and transmits maps data to a remote Python monitoring client.

What went wrong

Honestly? Cows are terrible beta testers. They don't respect geofences, they try to chew on the breadboard, and they have absolutely zero interest in tracking their real-time heart rate.