  Enabling Internet connectivity for mobile objects that do not have a
permanent home or regular movements is a challenge due to their varying energy
budget, intermittent wireless connectivity, and inaccessibility. We present a
hardware and software framework that offers robust data collection, adaptive
execution of sensing tasks, and flexible remote reconfiguration of devices
deployed on nomadic mobile objects such as animals. The framework addresses the
overall complexity through a multi-tier architecture with low tier devices
operating on a tight energy harvesting budget and high tier cloud services
offering seamless delay-tolerant presentation of data to end users. Based on
our multi-year experience of applying this framework to animal tracking and
monitoring applications, we present the main challenges that we have
encountered, the design of software building blocks that address these
challenges, and examples of the data we collected on flying foxes.
