Show Notes
In this Coredump Session, François Baldassari and Chris Coleman are joined by Torstein Nesse, co-founder and CEO of Monil, to explore the engineering behind solar-powered livestock collars that replace physical fences with virtual boundaries. Torstein shares his path from embedded security to building a connected hardware business, and explains how Monil combines positioning, motion sensors, and sound to guide animals. The conversation covers low-power design, cellular connectivity in rural areas, offline operation, hardware selection, and the field telemetry needed to understand device behavior. They also discuss seasonal firmware updates, a four-month network debugging challenge, and how an animal-health alert helped farmers discover cattle in danger.
Key Takeaways Monil’s collars use positioning, motion sensors, and sound to guide livestock within virtual boundaries. Immediate feedback helps animals learn to respond to the fence and turn around. The collars maintain virtual fencing offline and store telemetry until connectivity returns. Continuous positioning consumes more energy than occasional electric pulses. Solar charging and low-power design keep collars operating throughout the grazing season. Monil chose Nordic hardware for its low-power connectivity and mature SDK, alongside a dedicated GNSS receiver. Field data helped Monil develop alerts that identify animals stuck and needing rescue. Larger firmware updates are scheduled outside grazing season to reduce operational risk. Configurable device telemetry helps engineers investigate power consumption, fence behavior, and network failures. Farmers gain better grazing management, animal-health visibility, and peace of mind.
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