My name is Matt and I've been working on a project called Manger, a mobile app used for livestock management. As a child, I grew up in a rural area with chickens, cows and other livestock around me. At the same time, I've always been passionate about technology. About a year ago, I launched Manger on iOS, and, more recently on Android. Just this past week, I launched RFID tags for poultry, called "eFlock Smart Poultry Tags" along with a companion scanner. The "killer feature" of the app is long-range scanning support (up to 15 feet), which can be used to count and identify animals. I imagine it has some other "current" uses, for example, finding young chickens that have been spooked and hiding in grass.

The app is written with React Native and uses PouchDB, backed by SQLite. What makes this really neat is that you can sync your data across devices via a (local!) CouchDB server. At my homestead, my wife typically takes care of chickens and records how many eggs we've collected each day. On the other hand, I take care of rabbits and record their weight, as we keep them for meat. All of the data syncs between our iPhones. I currently have a Raspberry Pi setup running CouchDB and it has been working well. The goal for the app is to always be offline-first, with sync and backup functionality backed by on-premises hardware. This is a "beta" feature, as it's currently undocumented and I don't sell the hardware for that (yet).

The eFlock Smart Poultry Tags are passive UHF. It took me quite a bit of time to find a chip / antenna combination that has "long rage", while being "small". It's a trade off. The tags are 45.5mm x 19.5mm x 1mm and are perfectly fine for adult chickens. I think they are fine on young chickens as well - about 8 weeks when they become fully feathered. Tags are 3D-printed with TPU, which makes them flexible and durable. At the time of this writing, nine months into my test on 32 chickens, only one so far has been damaged.

The scanner, eScan H103 SE, is sourced from a manufacturer in China. Similar situation as with the tags, it took me quite a while to find something that is "long range" while staying relatively affordable. Depending on make / model, livestock scanners (LF/HF) range from a few hundred to upwards of a thousand dollars, so the scanner is definitely on the cheaper end of this spectrum.

My next upcoming feature are functions for number-type properties. For example, get the totals, average, maximum or minimum number of eggs collected within some specific time frame. Along those same lines, (local!) AI integration where you can simply ask "how many eggs did I collect last week?".

I have quite a few exciting long-term plans as well.

Here's a video of the scanning feature: https://youtu.be/wilixJiyPYA?si=_ptwYF0U05ViFCk2

All feedback is super welcome and I would be happy to answer any questions! :)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48351776

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

I think the name change also came before the AI hype.

Looking at my data, since we’ve had our first egg 743 days ago, our hens have produced 9,393 eggs, or an average of just above a dozen a day.

The app can also count chickens, since each chicken has a UHF RFID.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_iGn_pZ3IkY

The scanner that is used in the video has configuration for transmit power. At its maximum setting, the range is 15 feet with clear line of sight.

Tags with larger antennas, generally speaking, have longer range but might be too big for younger chickens.

So overall there are a lot of variables.

https://www.chafon.com/productinfo/1070742.html

Bought them on Alibaba.

Here's a video.

https://youtu.be/_iGn_pZ3IkY

https://youtu.be/_iGn_pZ3IkY?si=x4ijZdAP-suhuJ7Y

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/manger-animal-manager/id674269...