Agriculture IoT

Spinning Data,
weaving nomadic journeys.

A GPS device shaped like a spindle — so herders can record the grazing routes their land claims depend on, without changing how they already spend their day.

Discipline: Product & service design
Focus: Land rights for pastoral communities
Build: Arduino UNO, Adafruit FONA 3G
Field work: Himachal Pradesh & Bangalore

Desktop dashboard mapping a herder's recorded grazing route across mountainous terrain

Overview

To claim rights over the land they have grazed for generations, herding communities must file a Forest Rights Claim — and that claim rests on evidence of where they have actually been. Recording routes and grazing points is the hard part.

Spinning Data is a GPS device and companion portal that captures that evidence as a by-product of something herders already do, rather than as an extra task they have to remember.

The insight

Field research surfaced a habit worth designing around: while the sheep graze, shepherds spin raw wool into yarn using a takli — a portable drop spindle used across Himachal Pradesh. The activity already happens at exactly the moments and places worth recording.

A shepherd spinning raw wool into yarn with a takli spindle while resting — Spinning wool while the flock grazes — the routine the device was designed to borrow.

The device

The GPS unit takes the form of a takli. Spinning it marks a grazing point — the same gesture, now also an act of documentation. Because the object is already familiar, it reads as a tool rather than as foreign equipment.

Each spin records latitude, longitude, altitude, speed and time. That data is relayed to a portal where a civil worker turns it into a filed claim.

The GPS device modelled on a wooden takli spindle, shown from several angles and held in the hand

Device capabilities: monitor location, add local area codes, mark grazing spots and generate a claim form

Prototyping

The first prototype — Chulbuli V1, built on an Arduino UNO and an Adafruit FONA 3G module — was rough enough to get in front of shepherds quickly and confirm the interaction held up in the field.

Chulbuli V1: the first working prototype wired on an Arduino board in a plastic enclosure — Chulbuli V1 — Arduino UNO and Adafruit FONA 3G.

Chulbuli V2: a more portable enclosure held in the hand with sheep grazing behind — Chulbuli V2 — rebuilt for portability and live location mapping, then tested locally in Bangalore.

The system

The data serves two audiences at once. The herding community uses it to coordinate support and regulate grazing; civil workers use the same records to prepare and file the Forest Rights Claim.

Service map showing data flowing from the herder's device to the herding community and to civil workers filing the claim

The dashboard

A desktop portal plots each herder’s location in real time using the OpenStreetMap API. With live routes visible, communities can plan future grazing strategically — and send help to someone who needs it.

Dashboard screens showing herder profiles, recorded coordinates, terrain and satellite route mapping

Field testing in Bangalore: shepherds with their flock alongside the live route mapped on the dashboard — Field testing the second prototype in Bangalore.

Takeaways

Social sensitivity decided this project. Mobile apps and weekly training programmes had been tried before and failed — shepherds treated the technology as a foreign object and stopped using it. Borrowing a form they already trusted was what made the data collection stick.

Adoption is a design problem, not a training problem — the form of the object decided whether it was used at all.
The best data capture is a by-product of an existing routine, not an added task.
Building rough hardware early put the interaction in shepherds’ hands while it was still cheap to change.

Up next: side project Ono Diary: every recipe has a story, keep it →

Spinning Data,weaving nomadic journeys.