Home: Pet: Collar
Smart Collar & Door + App   (+4)  [vote for, against]
Collar utilizing BT to alert your phone when pet is far away

Hey all,

First time post, not sure what's existing already but I have a few ideas. If you love my idea please don't immediately steal it, if you hate it let me know why!

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Smart Collar

Collar with a wifi/bluetooth device under the name tag that is linked via bluetooth & wifi to an app on your smartphone that sends a notification if your pet has traveled outside of distance from your smartphone, wifi (or mifi.) In addition ideally I would like to have a GPS transponder and microphone on the collar that could signal where your pet is at all times, and flash on the interactive map when they bark.

If your dog or cat leaves a bluetooth distance (32 feet normal, 300+ with BT range adapter) you will get a ping (customizable to a bark or a meow.) Bluetooth would be most useful if you are out of wifi range but still need to keep a digital leash on your pets.

For the house pets wearing the smart collar using Wifi would be very useful for letting you know before it's too late that your pet has escaped.

OPTIONS:

Give your dog a mifi: For pets large enough, on the smart collar there would be the option for portable Wifi device attached to the back of your pets neck. This would be great to not only give you a hands free portable wifi, but would promptly alert you when your mifi signal fades (say while watching netflix it stops) as your pet runs further away from you.

Microphone/bark: Possibly a little over the top but I think it would be interesting to have a bark/meow- activated microphone that flashes your pets cursor on the interactive map. If your dog is outside chasing at squirrels it would be funny to see when he barked. It would only have to be good enough to detect when the dog barked/meowed not record clean audio or anything. If your dog is barking intensely for long periods of time you could have the Smart Collar. If your pet gets in fights alot this could be particularly useful.

Way over the moon idea: bark eliminator. White noise bark muffler using the microphone and a speaker to somehow nullify the sound of a dogs bark? Something cool like that?

This is just something I've been kicking around for a while.

BATTERY: I think it would be very hard to get a dog to sit still while you recharged his collar so the ideal design would have a removable rechargeable battery.

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Smart Door

Ideally, a smart door would allow a pet to enter from the outside at any time while preventing him from leaving without your permission. Using the technology on the smart collar as a key in conjunction with the smart collar app you could set a schedule giving you control over when your pet can leave. At the same time still granting him access back in case he slips out the door.

If having a two way key with wifi/bluetooth on a digitally controlled pet door that could recognize which side of the door the pet is on is over the top then it might need a few small video cameras to provide more accurate information.

Also, if not too ridiculous it would be pretty cool to be able to use the pet door as a remote webcam you could use to watch outside (or inside view of your door I guess, to see if your pet wants to go outside if the door is locked from the inside or something) ----

Smart Collar App

Ideally for ios and android it would have a few simple features. Four panel bottom dock with PET / MAP / SCHEDULE / OPTIONS.

PET ----

Information about your pet and your contact information that you input into the collar that could be read and scanned in the event that your pet runs away. Also within this you could customize your pet's avatar for their cursor indicating their location on the map.

MAP ---

A variant of google maps with the added feature of your customizable pet cursor for their location and an animation when their microphone is activated.

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Schedule

In addition to programming the smart door you could also have the options of having a schedule for alerts and stuff. You don't want a bunch of notifications your dog walked away from your bluetooth if you're just sitting on the couch watching tv so it would be nice to have customizability for a schedule. IE: If my dog left my house when i'm at work I could get a notification from my smart app, but by customizing the schedule I could chose to not be alerted.

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OPTIONS

just a slew of random options for you to customize and nerd out on for your cool collar.

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Ideally it would be able to be attachable to any dog collar, that way I don't have to worry about making a bunch of dog collars.
-- Duck Lagrange, Dec 02 2014

(?) Trax http://www.traxfami...acker-for-dogs.html
Another option [scad mientist, Dec 02 2014]

Cat Ejection Pack Cat_20Ejection_20Pack
Brings the cat home, too ... [8th of 7, Dec 03 2014]

In that link, I see that the only deice linked as a tracking device is the Garmin GTO 10, but that is discontinued (thought it looks like there are still a few available), and there is a note saying that the 2G the service provider used to report the position has scheduled the service to stop on Jan 1, 2016.

However, it appears that there are other competing products. Trax is one example. <link>
-- scad mientist, Dec 02 2014


Using one of these GPS trackers will require a little bit of work to control the smart door as described, since GPS info isn't accurate enough to tell if the dog took a nap just inside or just outside the door. You could combine the GPS data with a sensor on the door to know which way it swung. Of course if the dog goes to sleep by the door and some other animal goes through the door while the dog is sleeping...
-- scad mientist, Dec 02 2014


No, then you have just acquired a better dog.
-- pocmloc, Dec 02 2014


Thanks for the input guys. I have a few more ideas:

Microphone + accelerometer = mood tracker.

Analyzing the pitch/tone/volume of your pets cry in addition to analyzing how fast they are going (hell even read their pulse, why not it's around their neck too couldn't be too hard to work in with the mic) It would be nice to know if your dog is running top speed barking his head off, and my proposed smart collar would do so!

IE: Running + loud hissing growling snarling = angry Silent and stationary for 1+hr = idle
-- Duck Lagrange, Dec 02 2014


//Follow your entire family by adding both phones and trackers to the Trax App.

Trax page starts well, then goes all NSA.
-- not_morrison_rm, Dec 02 2014


//If you love my idea please don't immediately steal it//

How long do we have to wait? (Welcome to the HB [Duck Lagrange]!)
-- AusCan531, Dec 03 2014


<link>
-- 8th of 7, Dec 03 2014


I am considering making a kickstater and try talking to some programmers and engineers (or just study.. boo) to figure out how unfeasible my idea really is. This website is awesome!
-- Duck Lagrange, Dec 03 2014


//Give your dog a mifi// never heard that expression before, so my brain persists in reading it as "Give your dog a milf".
-- FlyingToaster, Dec 03 2014


Me neither, which just gave me another idea. for the "smart collar" I could just use a cheap android phone and program it to do all the same things, and somehow fit it into a dog collar. That would cover the list of my required hardware: GPS, microphone, wi-fi, bluetooth. You could keep it a functional phone (with plan? ugh) too and call your dog so he could hear your voice... I guess you'd have to get a carrier, but you could talk to your dog and watch him bark from the app!

So I guess you'd have to find a cheap ass android phone, provide the collar base model without carrier giving the option to add one. If your dog was on the wi-fi network you could still talk to him through the phone speaker even without carrier. It might scare the shit out of him though, but you could watch him run around looking for you on the smart collar app.
-- Duck Lagrange, Dec 04 2014


You could add a mild shock if they try to move beyond their "geofence", although not sure they'd understand the warning.
-- 4and20, Dec 04 2014


I think this needs to wait for the 1 metre accuracy GPS systems the Europeans and Russians are supposed to be doing..
-- not_morrison_rm, Dec 05 2014



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