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You need to make a larger hole with a right angle bottom, which is a weaker design. That being said, the difference is marginal at best, so this comes down to personal preference.

I would argue that a bored hole would be better than a countersunk hole in this circumstance… countersunk heads tend to pull themselves through timber easier than a flat head.

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Not displeased by it

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Damn that looks slick

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I know there Is some GPS tracker out there with GSM/LTE connection but it’s too BG a PCB for my use,
What I’? Looking for Is a GSM/LTE to a standard GPS module that would do the sale things for roughly the sale vole but It would be in two differenti pcbs and thatakes a big differenze for my use I can connect

Something like a metrLTE but smaller and without all the metre specific functions

this is not small enough?

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Okay, a bit of background explanation
I’ll need to move out this year, my cat is used to wander around in the quarter while I’m at work, so moving could be a bit traumatic

I’m affraid she’ll try somehow to get back to the place she’s used too and get lost in the process.
So I’m trying to make something I can put on a cat collar without bothering her.

This is about 40x30 which is on the bigger size for a cat collar and I need to had a battery and some sort of protective casing somehow.

My thought was that If I can split it in say three different part (gps, gsm, battery) each one like a small pendant, it will be less bothersome for her than one big thing hanging from the collar

(I admit I thought it was bigger than what it looks on your picture)

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Also I don’t think I’ll be able to buy one anyway as they jumped into unobtainium

Airtag

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As far as I know, no way to use one without an iphone x)

(Also I despise apple as a company)

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We got our cat a Tractive GPS tracker, works really well as long as there is service, so unlike a bluetooth tracker where someone with a compatible device has to be near it. Costs 12€/mo if you get the yearly plan. Bi-yearly is even cheaper I think. Its a bit bigger that an metr LTE , but the shape is really nice to fit on a collar / neck. Battery lasts for about a week for us. The app works on android and iphone, and there is also browser version.

Some pictures:





(She is wearing the tracker in all the pictures. Doesn’t bother her at all.)

You also get a heat map of where your cat likes to hang out:

The collar:

It’s a silicone holder, so the tabs at the end can stretch.

If your cat likes to crawl under things the connection can be a bit spotty, but otherwise it’s spot on. It also can produce sound and a flashing light, though the light is mostly a gimmick. The rest works fine.

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That’s a beautifull cat :slight_smile:
Thanks for the tip, I’ll look into it
(My cat is on the smaller side though, I don’t know if it would fit, maybe I’ll print something roughly the same shape and try)

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Thanks, I’ll tell her. :slight_smile: She got used to it really quick, good luck that yours will too.

Your idea with splitting the parts up is cool in theory, but making the stuff water tight is going to be a challenge. Also runtime will probably be shit, as this prebuilt tracker has a lot of energy saving features embedded, that are not existant on modules you can buy afaik.

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Realy ? I thought it was some well developed stuff and they are most OEM same boards in different casing, but that was just a guess

The positive point is that I could make swapable batteries.

For the watertight thing I guess your right, maybe I could reflow some pla printed parts with a heat gun, should reasonably be watertight, don’t know for the connections between parts though.

That’s worth trying, sounds like a fun project and those PCBs are pretty cheap, I need to find some reasonably priced simcard though

This is seriously cool.

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I use one of these in my first esk8 build with a buck converter in case of theft. I was able to find it in a 5 story building after having a friend hide it.

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This is a pretty densly packed unit, I doubt there are any of-the-shelf components in there. You also get a bluetooth ā€œradarā€ for example, that alone in ready-made components would be half the size of this tracker. I haven’t opened it so far though, I don’t want to compromised the water seals.

I mean, if you want the challenge and a new project by all means go for it. I don’t know how good your coding skill are, but you’d need to interface your gps module with the LTE module somehow, then interpret the sent coordinates and display it onto a map (openmaps could work for this). If you don’t want to send the coordinates via SMS then you’d also need to set up a server as a middle man. This is a lot of work, and then you only get a live view that holds up for a few hours until the battery is empty, depending on if you even can configure the GPS module to update only every few minutes or so. That update would then need to sync with the LTE module and so on…

It’s a lot of work for a very mediocre result, and then you’re missing a whole lot of features that are very nice to have, like a selective logging interface, switching between live mode with updates every second vs energy savings mode, high precision bluetooth tracking, sound, heatmaps, etc etc …

If you only want the tracker to work and get results the prebuilt one would be infinitively better. On the other hand, if you have the time for such a big project, have fun and good luck. :smiley:

Did you place the tracker inside the enclosure? The GPS woud’ve been very spotty I recon.

there is some oem tracker boards with gsm/lte and gps integrated and developed, it arrive with an app and all, so my progect part would be only the battery and enclosure

This one is only gsm but that’s an example
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003712518851.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.1000014.14.5241aTPsaTPsKT&gps-id=pcDetailBottomMoreOtherSeller&scm=1007.40050.281175.0&scm_id=1007.40050.281175.0&scm-url=1007.40050.281175.0&pvid=30fc5a3f-0729-48a7-bad0-fa58f7326c75&_t=gps-id:pcDetailBottomMoreOtherSeller,scm-url:1007.40050.281175.0,pvid:30fc5a3f-0729-48a7-bad0-fa58f7326c75,tpp_buckets:668%232846%238110%231995&isseo=y&pdp_npi=3%40dis!ILS!45.88!40.37!!!!!%402101ec1a16823349317738741ee878!12000026900868089!rec!IL!1896966734

Ah nice, that makes things a lot easier. Though I didn’t see anything about an app at the page you posted.