Custom field and lab tools built in collaboration with SmartGiraffe Consulting.

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Collaborator: Kevin Hannon, owner of SmartGiraffe Consulting combines coding and manufacturing for innovative technical tools.

The Opportunity. Tiger beetle recovery work needs environmental data at scales and conditions standard equipment doesn’t handle. Off-the-shelf telemetry doesn’t fit, so the tools had to be built. The focus is on laboratory, and field applications.

What ABC + SmartGiraffe Did.

• Designed the SCADA system controlling the world’s first purpose-built captive rearing lab for tiger beetles, with stepped-intensity remote alerts (inc. direct phone calls).
• Developed micro-telemetry hygrometers placed inside beetle enclosures, cutting larval mortality by more than 50%.
• Built solar-powered, SIM-card-enabled field telemetry units that survived submersion and remotely reported continuous microclimate data online.

Outcome. Tools became core infrastructure for ABC’s Puritan tiger beetle recovery program. Applications extend across tiger beetle habitats and ecological work requiring durable remote sensing.

For Projects Like this. ABC and SmartGiraffe collaborate on custom field and lab instrumentation where off-the-shelf options don’t fit. We’re a good first call for purpose-built telemetry, SCADA, or environmental monitoring tools.

Kevin Hannon (above) deploys a telemetry unit at PTB habitat in southern Connecticut in June 2019, and Rodger (at right) retrieves this same unit in late October 2019. Clearly, water height varies in the river – sometimes fully submerging the unit, which continued reporting unscathed.

These units observe continuous above, and below ground micro-climate conditions for tiger beetle larvae, and adults. Kevin developed independent solar powered units using SIM cards to view real time data via a dashboard online. The prototype units have applications for all tiger beetle habitats, and any ecological work requiring durable remote sensing technology.

An internal overview of the main field-telemetry units components.

Kevin custom designed circuit boards for many parts of the Puritan tiger beetle rearing project, including these used for telemetry of soil moisture in larval tubes.

Micro telemetry units, seen here placed in a “sentinel” tube of sandy soil, was one of several serving to alert staff when sand may become lethally dry for larvae, throughout the lab.