Herding Cattle Wirelessly Hacking Cows.

Original Story

*In quotes below is my summary of the article*
"This allows farmers to sit at home, on the computer, and use a personal server to upload a virtual map to the collars worn by the cattle. There are electric wireless fences that when a cows collar comes into close proximity to the wire run underground, the cow recieves a stimilus, such as a sound, or small electric shock to scare the cow away.

Using off the shelf products, the farmer can now herd his cattle via standard WiFi networking."


The next step is figuring out a way to hack into the local farmers cows!
I can see it all now, herding the cattle to the wrong place, sending out random shock signals, ahh... the possibilities!



[edit on 2-10-2004 by TreyFlipAWS]

[edit on 4-10-2004 by John bull 1]

h4x0rz will become the ones tipping cows, not jocks!

this is pretty cool though, i like the idea. its putting tech to a practical use outside of turning on a tv with your watch, and to those often critcized, stereotypically, for being reluctant to use new tech

That may work fine but what happens when the power goes off for several days like it just did when the hurricane came through. You will have cows wandering everywhere. I have electric fences and they can see them so they know where they are so they are more apt to stay in the pasture.

Whoa! That's an awesome idea.

It wouldn't be hard to set up your own, if you knew how to program and a little basic electronics. The inherent problem is charging batteries.. PV would be expensive and changing them would be a hassle for large cattle ranchers.. even for small ones, really.

The warning currently being used is one of a library of sounds intended to scare a cow, including roaring tigers, barking dogs and hissing snakes. The group's tests showed that while these sounds slow the cattle down - they receive the signal - they do not always stop them crossing the virtual fence.

Originally posted by MBF
I have electric fences and they can see them so they know where they are so they are more apt to stay in the pasture.

Yeah, at least they can see fences.

I would sure as hell want to see developers of this as "guinea bigs" in test where they're blindfolded and "equipped" with these and sent to big building.
I don't think they would keep this good idea after that!

IMO this is just one indication how far this "civilized western" human is from nature.
And from ethical viewpoint, if you don't even want to see your cattle daily how you're supposed to care about its well-being?

Read the article, it was tested on students.

From an ethical viewpoint, you're slaughtering and eating the cattle so what difference does its well-being make? Go to a PETA website and look at the pictures of the slaughtering factories, because if you have a problem with shocking them to keep them in a certain area then you're going to be apalled at how they're killed. Right now the fences are lined with sharp spurs and electrical fences have the same effect as a neck collar, so once again, what difference does it make?

Scaring the # out of them with helicopters, ATVs, and etc doesn't really scream "humane" to me either, and in fact, if this can be used with visual/auditory stimulus before a shock then this system is far more humane than what's going on right now.

In the end, if you don't like it, raise your own or eat veggies because complaining isn't going to help.

Originally posted by shbaz
Whoa! That's an awesome idea.

It wouldn't be hard to set up your own, if you knew how to program and a little basic electronics. The inherent problem is charging batteries.. PV would be expensive and changing them would be a hassle for large cattle ranchers.. even for small ones, really.

Well the battery problem could be solved if each little device would use solar power energy. Or mabye a charger of some sort.

I can see the headlines now:

"Brazen ram-raid by angry cows. Hackers suspected."

"Remote control cow-bomb kills 30."

"Farmers crops sabotaged by hacked cows."

And from ethical viewpoint, if you don't even want to see your cattle daily how you're supposed to care about its well-being?

I take it you don't know much about factory farming. Any cattle set to pasture is already one up on the comfort level. When raised for human use, milk, or meat, cattle are lucky if they get anything other than 50 square feet of space and food.

Cattle farmers only care about well-being as far as the animal remains healthy enough to eat/milk, or at least healthy enough to sell.

I think WiFi cattle herding is just silly. The only upside is that you can change the layout of your pastures. But you lose the benefits of a physical fence.