Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1233021
66 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I APRIL 2020 culty of matching them as opposed to doing an F-type patch PCB anten- na, in this case. We can tune that for the exact case and battery arrange- ment. On the assembly side, the other issue is to get good isolation be- tween the cellular mod- ule and the GPS module. We have also designed another patch antenna for the GPS transceiver. Holden: Does this have ap- plications for humans? Marshall: Analog Devic- es has been doing a lot of work in this area, and Apple is way ahead when it comes to the Apple Watch. Holden: A little known fact is that the Austra- lians and New Zealanders developed tracking electronics that animals swallow and stays in their guts. They are one of the biggest elec- tronics manufacturers in the world in terms of volume, but these allow them to track all of their animals, such as sheep. I was flabbergast- ed because I kind of never heard of that before. These things are sitting in these animals' stom- achs, but it allows them to electronically moni- tor health. My wife is a horse fancier, and the one thing that interests me is watching her rub down the horse. Horses sweat enormously, so I'm sure that needs to be taken into consideration to make this thing functional. Marshall: I have not been involved with the device's harness design, but from some brief conversations, I've gathered that getting the harnesses right takes a fair amount of effort. Shaughnessy: The horse might not like you putting the device on, and it has to be higher reliability and robust to deal with shock and vibration. Marshall: It is not in full production yet, and the outlier is finalizing the mechanical design. I've learned that there's a huge tolerance with horses. You could be talking about anything from 250 kilos to 750 kilos in weight. I have a few pictures of very early cases that came back from trials where it was obvious that it did not quite go to plan, and we ended up with some cracked cases. Again, it is an engineering story, which is, "Do you understand the problem?" One of the challenges my mechanical colleague has had is that, because you are putting it on an animal, you are trying to get a compromise between something that is robust enough but also has a certain degree of give. At the moment, we're running on an HP material, and some of the printing is done in Germany. It is obvious that you can use many different materials, such as glass filled or Kevlar, but the problem is if you make it too rigid, you run the risk that what- ever it is could be too brittle. Then, you have a similar problem if it suddenly starts breaking up with nasty shards on it. Shaughnessy: How long have you been work- ing with this group on that? Marshall: About 18 months.