Bunjil Ngurra – The Outback Guardian

An AI-powered Outback resilience and culture platform that blends maps, alerts, NFTs, and Telegram to help protect land, track wildlife, adapt to floods/droughts, and share culture globally.

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Inspiration

The Australian Outback is vast, remote, and full of challenges — from floods, droughts, and bushfires to limited healthcare and transport access. First Nations communities often face additional inequities and need tools to protect sacred lands, track wildlife, and preserve cultural knowledge. Ngurra was inspired by the need to combine AI, geolocation, and blockchain technology to empower communities, celebrate culture, and improve safety and sustainability in the Outback.

What it does

AgroRithm is an AI + IoT + Blockchain platform that prevents livestock grazing related conflicts while creating transparent agricultural and herding investment opportunities as well as protecting sacred lands via geofence and IoT logged immutably on Onchain. Our system: Ngurra is an AI-powered Outback guardian platform. It:

Tracks wildlife and stray animals across remote areas.

Provides geofenced alerts for floods, droughts, and fires using esp32 IoT sensors and gps hanged in strategic locations in the Outback.

Lets users log and protect sacred and cultural sites from unpleasant grazing and minning, activities are logged onchain for transparency and accurate settlements for ancient people.

Enables discoveries and sustainable actions to be minted as NFT(Non Fungible Tokens), creating cultural and financial opportunities for First Nations communities.

They can also earn NFT for teaching their languages, sustainability skills remotely or in-community, tokens can be exchanged for health access rewards and ride share rewards

Connects via Telegram for community engagement.

Prevents Conflicts: Real-time GPS tracking of livestock with AI-powered geofencing that sends early warnings when animals approach farms or restricted zones. Sends immediate alerts offline when cattle is about to stray into a non-grazing area or farm leveraging computer vision YOLO.

Democratizes Investment: PEACE token system enabling micro-investments starting at $1 in specific livestock, land plots, or sustainability actions

Educates Communities: Offline-first AI chatbot (AgroAI) providing agricultural education via mobile apps and Telegram bot

Rewards Sustainability: Blockchain-verified tokens for tree planting, composting, and other green practices

Creates Local Economy: Marketplace connecting herders with buyers for meat/milk, payable in cash or tokens

How we built it

We started by identifying key challenges faced by farmers and herders in Outback, especially livestock loss, conflict, and grazing management. Using this as a base, we developed AgroRithm as a modular platform:

IoT Layer → GPS trackers for livestock movement data, designed to work even in low-connectivity rural areas.

Mobile & Web Apps (PWA + Telegram bot) → Offline-first apps for farmers, herders, and admins to receive alerts, manage data, and interact with AI.

AI Models (TinyLLaMA ) → Educate farmers and herders via offline chatbot.

Blockchain (Hedera) → Immutable Logs of livestock events, movements, herders and landed agro properties(Grazing and nongrazing) for trust and dispute resolutions ie location, movement, rewards sustainability actions with PEACE tokens, and ensures transparent reporting. Investment in livestock can be easily done via the Hedera chain.

Firebase backend → For real-time data sync, storage of livestock events, herders, farmers, farmlands(grazing and non-grazing lands) and automated trigger via clouds for Hedera blockchain loggings for immutability. Getting the best of both WEB2.0 and WEB3.0.

We combined open-source tools (YOLOv5, Ollama, ) with custom-built features to deliver a system that works both online and offline, making it scalable and practical in rural settings.

Challenges we ran into

Building AgroRithm came with several challenges:

Connectivity issues → Designing a system that works offline-first in rural areas without stable internet required creative use of PWA technology, SMS/USSD fallback, firebase persistence and storage of geolocation by IoT neo6m on the esp32 if no netowork and sends when there is network. GSM/GPS trackers are used for more stable networks.

Data accuracy → GPS tracking on low-cost devices was sometimes unreliable, so we had to combine cell tower fallback to make livestock movement data more usable.

Blockchain integration → Making Hedera logging lightweight, cost-effective, and automated data trigger from firebase.

AI -> Running Tinyllama on a laptop with not too high RAM and then been able to access it on phone via LAN offline

Challenges in the design of the android app as a result of dependency issues.

Hardware limitations → Testing IoT trackers at times it wont connect due to building interferences or trees, has to have direct line of sight with space satellite, and also running AI locally on modest laptops meant optimizing models for low-power devices. Frontend: React + PWA for offline map access.

Maps & Geo: Google Maps API with custom Outback styling and geofencing.

AI: TinyLLaMA-powered assistant (“Bunjil AI Guardian”) for answering location-specific questions and guiding users.

Blockchain: Hedera for NFT minting and tracking cultural discoveries.

Alerts & Communication: Telegram integration for notifications and community messaging.

Data storage: Firebase for logging discoveries, alerts, and user activity.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A fully interactive Outback map with real-time wildlife and landmark discoveries.

Successfully built an offline-first IoT + AI livestock tracking system that works even in rural areas with limited internet.

Deployed blockchain logging for immutable livestock events and token-based incentives, making sustainability, trust, safety and transparency a core feature.

What we learned

The power of combining multiple technologies (AI, IoT, blockchain, geospatial data) to solve complex real-world problems.

Importance of offline-first design for underserved communities.

NFT integration that allows sustainable cultural actions to be recognized and monetized

The importance of combining multiple technologies (AI, IoT, blockchain, geospatial data) to solve complex, real-world problems.

AI chat assistant that can answer location-specific questions for safety and cultural knowledge.

What's next for AgroRithm: Smart Animal & Earth Sustainability Guardian

Expand AI capabilities to include predictive alerts for floods, droughts, and fires.

Add more sustainable earning opportunities for First Nations communities.

Enable broader NFT marketplace integration for cultural assets.

Improve voice-based interactions and offline-first accessibility for remote areas.

Collaborate with government and Indigenous organizations for wider adoption.

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