Tracking pigeons

[alex wight]

Wouldnt it be a good idea to be able to track our birds. My thought is: to have a website set up, that you register for a fee. You are supplied chipped rings, just like ets, you register them with the web site, and fit them to the birds. When there is a race on, and you would like to see your bird/birds progress, you type in the ring number, and it shows you exactly where that bird is. I know this would involve satelites, but if they can tell you where your car is at any given time, using satnav, surely it could work for the birds? Just a thought, and it would give us invaluable information, ie routes, losses. Any thoughts.

[invalidusername]

I wish I'd had something like this for my hen that escaped and didn't come back.  At least could have tracked her down :-(

 

I wonder whether a simple chip in a ring would be able to act as a receiver for a sat nav device of some sort?

[alex wight]

This is where we need someone in the know, to let us know how to go about it. I think 99% of the fancy would jump at the chance to be involved in something like this. We would also learn more about the birds.

[jimmy_84]

i watched a documetary on pigeons a few weeks back and they used some sort of small gps system and a small camera on a few birds to pick up information on the birds route home was very interesting to watch

[Guest slugmonkey]

there was a system set up here a few years back but at the time the satellite time was too expensive the bands were about 25.00 each and it would have cost about 40 dollars a month to monitor there were also some concerns that the electromagnetic energy may affect the birds

[alex wight]

Never seen dragons den m8, was it along the same lines as i,m sugesting? The cost would be a big thing, its like everything else it starts out expensive then levels itself out. Might even be an idea that the clubs raise funds and do it per club as oppose to individuals. Theres a wide scope, but cost and set up are the hurdles

[ChrisMaidment08]

can you imagun loseing bird and turn up at someones loft you have my bird  sir

[Guest slugmonkey]

some day soon this will probably be avaible although not specifically targeted at racers it will probably be more for security issues ( shoplifting, tool tracking, or anything where you wish to track an object that may be stolen )

one of the issues with this is batteries

[alex wight]

This could evolve into something massive. This can be used for all sorts of statistics. You could possibly be able to record every birds details, and look over them after the race is finished. The one about the bird in someones loft is a cracker, so it would stop theftect, unless the rings were removeable. You turn up at someones door and say " you have one of my birds, its sitting in box 1". lol I,d be interested in the costing and the setting up of such a system.

[invalidusername]

'I believe, Sir, you have my bird' ;-D ;-D  The number of people here who have had birds stolen.  What a great thought :-)

[jimmy_84]

it would solve the stray problem as the birds wouldn't acctually be lost just on holiday LOL

[alex wight]

lol jimmy

[abbeypap]

Slugmonkey,

 

Where did you see trackers for 25.00 and monitoring for $40?

 

My husband has a company that does tracking things and I know that they are looking at something for his pigeons and hopefully for my dogs.  At present all my dogs are protectecd by a device in there show cruiser and if anyone moves it outside a 50m radius at the dog shows I get an alarm text message straight to my phone with there co-ordinates, and if needs be they can be tracked from my home computer.

 

Biggest problem seems to be getting something small, lightweight and inexpensive.  Wish they would hurry then we wouldnt have to worry about where any of our pigeons are.

[alex wight]

abbeypap, does your husband get funding to carry out tests? or is it out his own pocket? i,m pretty sure peregrines are microchip and traceable, by the police. So it must be possible to do what we would love to have.

[abbeypap]

Hi, Boomerang

 

Will have to ask him, don't know the first thing about it except that it is his company and it puts the feed in the trough for the birds.  

 

They do trackers for cars and all that kind of stuff, my dogs are microchipped and are only traceable if scanned by a scanner which id's the dogs unique number, but you can't track them.  There is a device they are looking at that costs £250 and will text a gps location to you, but the battery life is only 24 hours, so he has his design guy working on something similar but better. (hopefully)

One of my friends had a radio thing for his Harris hawk, but that is different again to being able to sit at your computer and pinpoint you birds on a map.

[alex wight]

Will be interesting of his findings, who knows we may be tracking our birds in the future, fingers crossed.

[Guest slugmonkey]

Batteries, batteries, batteries, this is just one of the problems that we have

I didn't see it for 25.00 and 40.00 the site I saw it on said this was the target number and that they would be offering it soon since then the site has gone away I talked with another guy he said that was a closer number for 1 object which means it would be like 800.00 for a 20 bird team

[Roland]

Been out 20 years ago... But would cost dear to set up.

[ChrisMaidment08]

the place in chelten ham name escapes me are tracking pigeons what they use could im sure be made smaller maybe ring size   rpra would know

[alex wight]

Interesting views. As it may be an expensive venture, it may be an option for the club to select a number of birds to be chipped, or even at fed level. It would still give some kind of indication to whats happening to the birds. As for the battery side of it, i,m sure the technology that we have today we can combat that.

[ChrisMaidment08]

todays watch batterys are small enough to be fitted to bird     providing no head lights

[Guest slugmonkey]

keeping The band running for a whole season is going to be a problem and getting it small enough to where it dosent interfere with performance is another, if all birds wore the same weight it would be ok but most of what has been done has been for research and not designed with racing in mind you can track birds a reasonable distance but how much weight can a bird carry 500 miles ?

I think it would be great could you imagine watching races in real time it would definatly cut the snooze time on races, or think about watching the sun city race or world ace challenge with this that would be awesome !!!

[abbeypap]

At the end of the day it comes down to cost.  How much would you be willing to spend on a system to help you find your pigeons?  Initial cost for computer software combined with £??? per unit per bird plus monthly fees for GPS or GPRS connection could add up to a bit more than most loft winnings.

 

Would be good for watching special races, but don't think I'd fancy sitting at the computer watching dots on a map each Saturday.  Soon won't need a human in the loft.  Watch them racing via a tracking system, ETS for timing all thats needed is ring off via internet to the local club / fed and you won't need to leave the house.  What would be the point.  

[alex wight]

Now now abbeypap, its not about watching the race unfold by computer. Its about finding out how what or why the pigeons are getting lost. I agree with you, not to get lazy, but my sugestion as i said is to gain info off the birds on race day.

[abbeypap]

Sorry!!

 

Everyone is always looking for easier ways to do things.

 

Would love to see the race as the pigeons see it, quite a story I would think.

Shame it isn't available now, would love to find this seasons youngsters.