We describe the design and implementation of Vildehaye, a family of versatile, widely-applicable, and field-proven tags for wildlife sensing and radio tracking. The family includes 6 distinct hard-ware designs for tags, 3 add-on boards, a programming adapter, and base stations; modular firmware for tags and base stations (both standalone low-power embedded base stations and base stations tethered to a computer running Linux or Windows); and desk-top software for programming and configuring tags, monitoring tags, and downloading and processing sensor data. The tags are versatile: they support multiple packet formats, data rates, and frequency bands; they can be configured for minimum mass (down to less than 1 g), making them applicable to a wide range of flying and terrestrial animals, or for inclusion of important sensors and large memories; they can transmit packets compatible with time-of-arrival transmitter-localization systems, tag identification and state packets, and they can reliably upload sensor data through their radio link. The system has been designed, upgraded, and main-tained as an academic research project, but it has been extensively used by 5 different groups of ecologists in 4 countries over a period of 5 years. More than 7100 tags have been produced and most of these have been deployed. Production used 41 manufacturing runs. The tags have been used in studies that so far resulted in 9 scientific publications in ecology (including in Science). The paper describes innovative design aspects of Vildehaye, field-use experiences, and lessons from the design, implementation, and maintenance of the system. Both the hardware and software of the system are open.

Most species of birds and bats must be tracked with tracking tags weighing less than 10g and many require tags weighing less than 1g. Tags based on commodity internet-of-things system-on-chips (SoC) can be be mass produced at low-cost, hence allowing many individuals to be tracked. We report on the design and performance of two communication protocols that enable long-range communication with such tags. One is a unidirectional protocol, in which tags transmit unique codes that can be reliably detected from 15km away and that can be used for time-of-arrival and angle-of-arrival localization (tracking). The other is a bidirectional protocol that allows tags to transmit short data packets to low-power low-cost basestations and to receive commands from them. Data packets in this protocol can be reliably received from tags that are 8km away and sometimes from up to 15km, and commands packets can be received by tags from up to 4km away. These protocols have been implemented in low-cost tags that can weigh less than 1g (depending on the choice of battery) and using only about 60uJ per transmission. Our results have been gathered by tagging wild bats. The same tags have been used for time-of-arrival localization of wild bats and birds by several different research groups in 3 countries.