Wireless Piezoelectric Horse Sensor System

Abstract: The domestication of horses took place at least 2000 BCE. Since then, horses have been used for transportation, agricultural work and even for warfare. Today, horses have been bred into world athletes, used worldwide in equestrian sports. However, these explosive performance horses present characteristics that make them prone to injuries leading to lameness. According to the insurance company Agria, more than 50 % of all reported injuries on horses in Sweden each year, are related to lameness. Using more objective analysing methods can lead to earlier detection and decrease the occurrence of this kind of injuries. In this Master’s degree project, a horse sensor system was proposed, designed and manufactured as a first prototype. The system consists of a force measuring device and an external reader. The force measuring sensor itself is a piezoelectric printed sensor. The force measuring device senses, acquires and transmits the raw data to the external reader. The focus of this project was on the hardware- and software development of the force measuring device and the software development for the external reader. To develop and verify the algorithms, as well as the entire system concept, the CC1352R1 Launchpad from Texas Instruments was used. The first results have indicated that the developed hardware and software of the force measuring device performs as expected. Also, important conclusions were drawn for both the force measuring device and the external reader. E.g., the force measuring device should fit the required physical dimension of the hoof sole, and the algorithms of the external reader should be improved in terms of data flow and memory usage. To conclude, the project is a challenging application making use of modern wireless sensor technology and printed electronics.