Hi all,
I was wondering if anybody has experience in building VHF-tags from the scratch. I couldn't find useful instructions online, so maybe anybody wants to share own experience...I am working on bats and sometimes I simply need to locate a roost of a bat, which I caught foraging. 150€ for a commercially avaliable tag is quite a lot for this simple application.
all the best,
Simon
9 January 2019 4:57pm
Hi Simon,
Try Naef-Daenzer, B., Früh, D., Stalder, M., Wetli, P., & Weise, E. (2005). Miniaturization (0.2 g) and evaluation of attachment techniques of telemetry transmitters. Journal of Experimental Biology, 208(21), 4063-4068.
It's a single-stage transmitter (so lower range than a two-stage) and the components are probablly all out-of-date, but most of them look easily replaceable. At 0.2g, probably good for bats though!
Cheers,
Rob
Rob Appleby
Wild Spy
9 January 2019 5:01pm
apologies, here's the link to the paper: http://jeb.biologists.org/content/jexbio/208/21/4063.full.pdf?download=true
17 January 2019 9:48am
Hi Simon,
I wonder, what is the size of the typical bat that you study? In grammes?
Thanks,
-harold
17 January 2019 9:51am
Hi Harold,
the bats we track weigh at least 20-30g. I am currently looking into building the tags described in the reference Rob posted. I will order some prototype boards at some point.
However, I'm also interesting in any instructions to build less sophisticated tags (they should be < 1g), if they are easier to assemble that the ones in Naef-Daenzer et al. 2005. Would be a cool thing to do with students...
all the best,
Simon
Rob Appleby
Wild Spy