A closer look at the Halter collar
Halter seeks to redefine the way that we farm, unlocking possibilities for farmers that, until now, haven’t been possible. Our solar-powered, GPS-enabled smart collar couples with a simple app that enables farmers to automate herd movements around their farm, manage pasture with precision using virtual fences and optimise cow health with real-time heat detection and health alerts.
Halter provides farmers with a single tool to completely optimise their farm operation, from maximising productivity and increasing pasture utilisation, to boosting heat accuracy, animal health outcomes and performance. Halter strives to lead the way into a future of farming that is more efficient, ethical and sustainable.
Our team work extremely closely with our farmers to ensure the product we build delivers extensive value. We recognise that in order to offer farmers a system that truly changes their lives, it’s critical that we get the foundations right - and a key component of this is the Halter collar.
Our approach to building a robust and future-proof smart cow collar
Halter’s solar-powered smart collar needs to withstand harsh weather, impact and large variations in temperature, while nailing the many tests that a cow will undoubtedly throw its way - and there lies the first hardware challenge; how do we design and develop a robust collar that can handle the rugged elements of a farm?
Our second challenge is all about power; how do we design a collar that not only generates enough power to guide cows remotely, set virtual fences and continuously monitor cow behaviour, but also gives us the capacity to deliver over-the-air feature updates to collars in the field, as we continuously strive to roll out new features that provide our farmers with more value.
It’s a good thing our team loves a challenge because it quickly becomes clear that the way our collar is designed and constructed is integral to the features we roll out, and the reliability of our system as a whole.
To tackle these challenges, we have an exceptional team of engineers that aren’t short of drive and hunger, and who have since designed and built our leading-edge solar-powered Halter collar. To share with you the work that went into building our robust and future-proof collars, we asked our Head of Hardware, Andrew McLaren to answer some of our frequently asked questions.
Our Head of Hardware answers our most frequently asked questions about the Halter collar
How can you ensure your collars withstand the extreme outdoor environments year-round?
Before beginning the design process we worked hard to truly understand the environment that our collars were going to be operating in, and exactly what they would need to withstand. It makes sense then that a lot of our time was spent on the farm, observing what the cow's neck goes through, and in turn what the collar would experience. We also studied the environmental elements that the collar would be exposed to - harsh UV, dirt, natural bacteria, humidity, moisture, to name a few.
Our on-farm observations produced a multitude of learnings and insights and from there we developed hundreds of prototypes with the purpose of testing different collar designs. Prototype collars are used prior to mass production; they are able to be manufactured rapidly in-house and within 72 hours we can be testing certain elements of the collar.
What tests have you endured to ensure the collars are robust and reliable long-term?
Our smart collars have been put through their paces in every which way. We’ve carried out hundreds of tests and spent thousands of hours battering our collars, and it’s through this rigorous and methodical testing that we’re able to have full confidence in the robustness of our collars. The extensive testing we’ve gone through leaves a lot to cover, so for the sake of keeping to a tight word count I’ll briefly highlight just a couple of tests, specifically related to UV exposure and impact.
With Halter collars operating in an outdoor environment, they are naturally exposed to extreme levels of sun which has the potential to severely degrade materials over time. In order to combat this, we began by selecting materials that have been rated for the most extreme UV environments and utilising material classes that have been used for many years on New Zealand farms.
To test how our collars would handle extreme UV exposure we ran a series of accelerated life tests. These tests subject the collars to extreme levels of UV exposure in a sped-up environment to show faults and potential areas of failure within a short period of time. We then look at things like; how have the materials aged? Have they maintained their ductility and resistance to impact?
Now, impact. It goes without saying that these collars are going to experience some serious knocks in their time - as much as we love our cows, they aren’t the most delicate of animals and they don’t show a great deal of care for the beautiful high tech pieces of jewellery we’ve given them. That’s why we relentlessly test our collars until we are certain they are robust enough to take even the most severe impacts, manifold.
Simulating the rough and tumble that a collar will be subjected to over its lifetime is done through numerous tests, one of these being the tumble test. Here the collar is repeatedly dropped onto a thick steel plate, at random orientations, to ensure the entire collar is subjected to heavy impact over and over. Results from tests like these help guide which features or components of the collar are reinforced, ultimately removing any weaknesses from the collar through a series of iterations.
These tests are all completed while we simultaneously carry out on-farm testing, however, on-farm testing is limited to the length of the test i.e you put a collar on a cow for 6 months and you know it lasts for 6 months. Where accelerated life testing truly shows its worth is that it enables us to make inferences about how the collar will continue to perform over long periods of time.
Halter collars are solar-powered; what does that mean for farmers?
Solar-powered collars are not only practical because they remove the need to replace batteries, but they also play in a league of their own in terms of their capacity to produce large amounts of power. Where batteries and battery-powered collars lend access to a finite amount of power limiting their functionality, solar power opens the gates to far greater opportunities around how much our collars can do and how often they can do it.
Halter collars utilise four solar panels enabling us to generate excess power that we can then use to continually roll out new features and expand upon functionality - essentially future-proofing our collars. Using solar-power is necessary to generate the amount of power required to remotely guide cows, however, this large power bank also lends its hand nicely to a number of other features including tracking herd health.
If your collars are solar-powered, how do they stack up in winter?
Developing a solar-powered collar has been no easy feat, and we quickly found farmers down South asking how it’ll fair during the dark, fog-filled winters. In short, our solar panels have been designed in such a way that even in the deepest part of winter the Halter collars have enough power to operate. In fact, for large parts of the year, the solar panels will generate more power than necessary. Take summer for example; during summer the power available on our collars is overflowing, this time of year gives our team plenty of opportunity to convert that power wealth into valuable features at your fingertips.
We hope this has answered a few of your questions about how seriously we take the reliability of our collar, and system as a whole. Despite diving right into the Halter collar, we’ve barely touched the surface of the work that’s gone into their design, testing and production (Andrew would still be talking if we hadn’t given him a word limit).
To simply say we’ve spent thousands of hours developing and testing the Halter collars is an undersell because what that doesn’t highlight is the grit, determination and passion of the team behind its design and execution. Deploying a system to farmers that makes a genuine difference to their daily operations and lifestyle motivates everything we do here at Halter, and we are nothing less than chuffed to be delivering value to a growing community of farmers using Halter, as we deploy onto farms across New Zealand.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Halter can unlock value and efficiency on your farm, register your farm to connect with us.
