tRackIT OS: Open-source Software for Reliable VHF Wildlife Tracking

Abstract

We present tRackIT OS, open-source software for reliable VHF radio tracking of (small) animals in their wildlife habitat. tRackIT OS is an operating system distribution for tRackIT stations that receive signals emitted by VHF tags mounted on animals and are built from low-cost commodity-off-the-shelf hardware. tRackIT OS provides software components for VHF signal processing, system monitoring, configuration management, and user access. In particular, it records, stores, analyzes, and transmits detected VHF signals and their descriptive features, e.g., to calculate bearings of signals emitted by VHF radio tags mounted on animals or to perform animal activity classification. Furthermore, we provide results of an experimental evaluation carried out in the Marburg Open Forest, the research and teaching forest of the University of Marburg, Germany. All components of tRackIT OS are available under a GNU GPL 3.0 open source license at https://github.com/nature40/tRackIT-OS.