StarBridge Sensors’ Innovative IoT Advancement with RAKwireless

RAKwireless IoT and Cattleva’s Collar Tech Transformed Dairy into Smart Farming

Quick Look: Use Case Summary
Principal Emphasis RAKwireless Product Value
Supporting Themes LoRaWAN® Education
Industry Livestock Agriculture
Sub-Industry Smart Dairy Farming and Herd Health Monitoring
Deployment Area Large outdoor rural environments (dairy farms)
IoT Stack Used Smart collars (with MCU), LoRaWAN + Wi-Fi communication, WisGate Edge Ultra full duplex gateway, AWS IoT backend

Highlights

Cattleva is a company from New Zealand that transformed dairy farming with its smart collar technology for herd health monitoring and smart farming. These collars help farmers to manage their herds from far away.
As their network grew to thousands of connected devices, they faced challenges like network congestion and unreliable data transmission. RAKwireless provided a strong LoRaWAN full duplex gateway that fixed these problems. It improved network stability and made device management easier.
Thanks to RAKwireless, Cattleva’s farmers can now monitor their animals and land more effectively.

Company Profile

Cattleva is a visionary company based in New Zealand that has significantly transformed the dairy farming industry with its smart collar technology for cows. This innovation allows dairy farmers to manage their herds from a remote environment. They are introducing a new era of smart farming, better productivity, and advanced animal welfare.
The Cattleva collar utilizes sound cues and vibrations to serve various purposes, like herding, directing cows to milking sheds, or isolating individual animals. The setup is integrated with a mobile app to offer farmers unprecedented flexibility in controlling their herds from any smart device.
The technology ingeniously translates human commands into signals understandable by animals, and vice versa. Therefore, the relationship between farmers and their herds becomes even stronger.

Most Valued Features of the Cattleva Collar

Farmers find great value in several parts of Cattleva’s smart collar system. These features help them manage their herds more easily and improve the overall performance of the farm.
  1. Mating Prediction
    The collar system helps farmers know the right time when a cow is ready to mate. This makes it easier for them to plan breeding without guessing. It also helps them increase the number of successful births, which leads to more milk production and higher profits. Farmers no longer need to rely on constant physical observation. The system handles it with accurate health data and alerts.
  2. Pasture Management
    Farmers get daily updates on their fields through the mobile app. These updates include useful details like satellite images, current weather, and how much grass is available. This helps farmers decide when to move their cows to a better location so they get the best grazing. It saves time and supports the health of both the cows and the land.
  3. Virtual Fencing
    Farmers can now control where cows go without using physical fences. They just set boundaries through the app. The collar uses gentle signals to guide the cows in or out of different parts of the field. This makes it easier to split grazing areas and avoid overusing any one patch. It also cuts down the need for labor and fence maintenance.

Problem

  1. Scaling thousands of connected devices for smart farming across large rural areas often leads to network congestion. This makes the communication unreliable and data transfers inconsistent.
  2. Performing high-bandwidth tasks like firmware updates or real-time control becomes increasingly complex without a high-capacity connectivity solution.

Scaling and Deployment Challenges

Cattleva ran into several tough challenges while building and growing its smart farming network. Each cow wore a collar that worked like a smart device. It carried a small computer called a microcontroller unit (MCU) that helped move cows, send data to the cloud using AWS IoT, and update software over-the-air (OTA) when needed. This setup needed a strong and reliable system behind it.
Cattleva chose two types of wireless connections for their system.
  1. LoRaWAN
    They used LoRa to send small amounts of data over long distances without using much battery. This worked well because many farms sit in remote areas where phone signals are weak or missing.
  2. Wi-Fi
    They used Wi-Fi to send large files like software updates. That helped keep the system fresh with new features.
However, as the number of cows grew into the thousands, the pressure on the network also grew. Each collar had to talk to the system smoothly and without delay. This is where the need for high-speed and stable communication became clear. Cattleva could not afford delays or lost signals, especially when controlling animal movement.
They needed a gateway that could handle more traffic and talk to many devices at once. A simple one-way connection no longer worked. They turned to a full duplex gateway that could send and receive data at the same time. This helped them increase the network capacity and meet the growing demand of large dairy farms.

Location

New Zealand

The Solution

As the network grew, Cattleva met bigger challenges and harder decisions. They needed solutions that could match their farm’s growth and make managing it simple and reliable.
This growth brought new questions:

Which gateway could handle such a heavy load?

Which partner could provide reliable support and flexible solutions?

And why does LoRaWAN technology fit perfectly in this setup?

The answers lie in the choice of RAKwireless and the powerful features of LoRaWAN. Let’s explore how these solutions helped Cattleva overcome its challenges and build a smarter dairy farm.

RAKwireless’ Role in Better Farming

Cattleva looked for a partner who could keep up with their fast-growing network. They wanted a setup that could handle more animals, stay within budget, and be easy for their team. That’s when RAKwireless gave them a complete solution that checked all the boxes. Cattleva selected RAKwireless and the WisGate Edge Ultra as a reliable LoRaWAN gateway for agriculture for several key reasons:
  • A Network with Larger Capacity
    The full-duplex gateway offered the large capacity needed to properly manage thousands of animals.
  • Flexible Service and Support
    RAKwireless adjusted the power input setup to match Cattleva’s existing battery system. This made the process smooth and easy without causing any integration problems.
  • Cost-Effectiveness
    We delivered all this at a cost that stayed within budget. This has proved that high performance does not have to come with a high price.
  • Simplicity
    Our products came with a simple design that made setup and management easy for farmers and technicians alike.
RAKwireless helped Cattleva move forward with confidence. Our strong and simple solutions gave Cattleva the space to grow without delays or extra stress.

The LoRaWAN Advantage

Cattleva needed a network that could work well in large open areas and support devices that stayed in the field for long hours. They also wanted full control over the system without depending on outside networks. LoRaWAN gave them exactly what they needed.
  • Low Power Consumption
    LoRaWAN helped Cattleva run devices without using too much battery. Each collar stayed active for long periods, which meant farmers did not have to charge or replace batteries often. This saved time and made the system more reliable for daily use.
  • Long-Range Transmission
    Cattleva managed cows across wide pastures. LoRaWAN sends signals over very long distances without any trouble. Even when cows spread across far corners of the farm, the connection stayed strong. This made it easier to track movement and send instructions on time.
  • Private Network Capability
    Cattleva used LoRaWAN to build a private network. This gave them full control over their data and system. They did not rely on mobile networks or third-party services. This made the network more secure and always available when needed.
LoRaWAN gave Cattleva the freedom to build a smart farming system on its own terms. The network stayed reliable in the field and most importantly, it gave Cattleva full control over how they managed their animals, their land, and future growth initiatives.

The Outcome

Cattleva needed a partner that could take their existing LoRaWAN network and push it to do more. They wanted stronger performance, easier upgrades, and better support. RAKwireless solutions helped Cattleva reach the full potential of its smart farming system.
It made life easier for the farmers, helped them plan with more confidence, and allowed them to care for their animals and land with greater ease. This shows what happens when the right technology meets the right vision.
Get Ahead with Smart Farming
Don’t wait for missed signals or lost data.
Contact us today to build a reliable network that keeps you connected in real time.
https://www.rakwireless.com
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