Find your sheep
On the 24th of January 2020, students Dian (21) and Michael (21) presented the website: www.findyoursheep.nl where the exact location of the sheep herd is shared and refreshed every 3 minutes. Together with the company Nidaros, the students developed a new way of service delivery for tourists and citizens. Deputy of the Drenthe province Henk Brink explained during the presentation the importance of tourists for the province of Drenthe and that this new website facilitates the service level for this target group.
Students Michael and Dian
But how does it work?
One of the sheep is carrying a sensor which transmits once every three seconds to so-called gateways. These gateways, based on the LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network), cover the whole of the province of Drenthe and via internet send the coordinates of the sheep to the website. Citizens and tourist can visit the website to find the exact location of the sheep herd. LoRaWAN is very applicable for this issue, since the signals can cover a long range (30km), are low in costs, have a long-lasting battery and are especially suitable for small amounts of data. One other advantage of LoRaWAN in this pilot is, is that the province of Drenthe is the only province in the Netherlands completely covered with gateways.
Future
The Find Your Sheep pilot can be rolled out on many different topics as well. This Proof of Concept shows that LoRaWAN is very suitable to improve available information on all sorts of movements. The sensors can be applied to water locks, mills, traffic movements etc. This can provide the province with necessary monitoring information which can help improve the public service delivery.