Vision

What we’re building

A piece of public conservation infrastructure. Not a product, in the commercial sense; a community-owned protocol and toolset that anyone can adopt without permission or payment, and that integrates cleanly with the platforms NZ trapping groups already use.

Why

NZ has set itself the goal of being predator-free by 2050. That target requires sustained effort by thousands of trappers — community volunteers, DOC staff, iwi, landowners — across difficult terrain. Most of that effort is invisible to the rest of the country. Most of those trappers walk lines that get checked weekly because they have no other way to know when a trap fires.

Remote-monitoring technology exists. It’s commercial, locked, and priced for organisations. It does not serve the community that does the bulk of the work. The conservation sector deserves an option that is open by default and affordable to the smallest contributor.

Who this serves

• The volunteer trapper who runs a line on weekends and wants to know if any of their traps need attention without walking the whole line.
• The community trapping group that runs hundreds of traps with a small budget and a few dedicated volunteers.
• DOC and Predator Free 2050 as a low-cost extension to the network of existing commercial monitoring, particularly for sites where the commercial options don’t pencil out.
• The conservation-tech researcher who needs a platform they can modify and publish results from.
• The hobbyist who wants to monitor a trap on their property and contribute the data back to the community.

What success looks like

Not “DOC adopts meshtrap network-wide.” That would be flattering, but the wrong target.

Success is:

• A community group can buy hardware, run their own network, and have data flowing to Trap.NZ within an afternoon.
• A landowner can buy a single trap, register it with a nearby network, and contribute data without becoming part of anyone else’s administrative burden.
• A researcher can fork the firmware, modify it for their experiment, and run a sub-network without disturbing anyone else’s deployment.
• An operator can leave the project entirely with all their data and hardware intact, hosting their own infrastructure if they want to.

These are the freedoms an open protocol provides. The brand “meshtrap” is incidental.

Principles

• Open by default. Firmware, schematics, server code, protocol — all open under permissive licenses. Closed components live elsewhere or not at all.
• Federate, don’t centralise. Each operator’s network is sovereign. The central service is a default convenience, not a gatekeeper.
• Plain words. Documentation that a ranger can read. Procedures that a volunteer can follow. UX that a non-technical operator can navigate.
• Power is sacred. Endpoint battery life is the single feature most operators will judge us on. Every microamp matters.
• Honest claims. We don’t outperform proprietary VHF in dense bush. We don’t compete with Goodnature’s traps. We don’t replace Trap.NZ. We are the plumbing between them.
• Slow and right. A working pilot before a marketing push. A validated design before custom PCBs. Engagement with DOC and PF2050 before assuming a deployment context.

What this is NOT

• Not a startup. No exit. No investor.
• Not a fork of an existing project. The protocol and the architectural decisions are designed for this problem, not inherited from a different one.
• Not a competitor to Goodnature, Econode, WheroNet, or Encounter Solutions. Each of those has a niche and an audience; meshtrap fits alongside, not in place of.
• Not a substitute for actually walking the line. Remote monitoring reduces unnecessary visits; it does not eliminate the field work that NAWAC requires for animal welfare.