The Technology - Overview:

Our original plan was to set up a properly big tracking system
using 3 Doppler RDFs (Radio Direction Finders) and triangulation
to automatically trace our lighters over a long period of time.
Which would have been nice.

But after these plans were confronted with the real world, the
time-scale and especially the budget available, we decided to go
for a more managable approach - manual tracking in the urban habitat.

For transmitters inside the lighters we used transmitters manufactured
by Wildlife Inc. transmitting 30 impulses per minute on frequencies
50KHz apart in the 150MHz frequency band. The tracking we accomplished
with the help of low-cost Uniden frequency scanners, omni as well as
directional antennas.

Equipped with these devices we then patrolled the streets of Limerick
scanning the transmitters frequencies for their little bleeps.

 

Links to Resources on the net:

International Society for Biotelemetry - the obvious choice

http://www.biotelem.org/ - good collection of links and resources

clearinghouse for ecology software - provides links to software developers and equipment manufacturers