3 ms·

I've tried all the major pet trackers. Most of them are too big for cats. Many of them are just Bluetooth which doesn't help at all when your cat gets far away.

by leros 3y ago

I've tried all the major pet trackers. Most of them are too big for cats. Many of them are just Bluetooth which doesn't help at all when your cat gets far away. The better ones have Bluetooth, wifi, LTE, and GPS. The ones with more than Bluetooth try to be clever to preserve power and only enable the other radios in certain situations. I haven't found one that does this well yet. I would prefer they use more power and track better. For something moving like a cat, you really need better tracking. There are a few uses cases I want to work well: 1) I want to know when my cat leaves home and then be able to find him with realtime GPS. 2) I want to find my cat when he's home. He can easily decide to nap under a bush in my yard and then he's impossible to find. The most common one I see people using is Tractive. I personally found it literally useless. When you're close to home, it only enables Bluetooth and your phone app is basically looking for the signal strength of the tracker's Bluetooth. I found that my phone (Samsung Ultra S22) didn't sense my cat unless I was 15-20ft away, which isn't very helpful as I already have to know where he is. The one I decided to use is JioBit. When you're close to home (based on it sensing your home wifi) it only has Bluetooth enabled but it makes a connection to your phone. I found this to work over about 50ft. When connected, you can ring a bell on the tracker and find your cat. Pretty useful. When your cat is away from home, it only updates the GPS location every 5-15 minutes over LTE which I find too infrequent. Another annoyance is that it only does GPS tracking when your cat is too far from your home wifi. My cat can get way beyond Bluetooth range but still close enough to detect my wifi and then I have no tracking at all. What I would really like is something like the JioBit but with better connectivity. I want: 1) It to check in with a server every few minutes. Using wifi when home or LTE when not home. I want this because I want to be able to enable realtime gps tracking when I'm looking for my cat. 2) When realtime tracking is enabled, actually be realtime. Give me updates every 15 seconds at least. 3) Give me the ability to ring the device over wifi or LTE. The JioBit can last a few weeks in its current mode. I'm willing to cut that down significantly. And I really don't mind it burning power when I'm actively trying to find my cat.

deirdresm 3y ago
I've been using FitBark for the last 2-1/2 years. The catch is that my cat's use case (being mostly outdoors, mostly out of Bluetooth range, and mostly draining power) doesn't match the engineering design model of a dog who's with you most of the time and might escape on occasion. They gave me a more power-conserving build, though. The one anomaly here is one I've noticed with Pokémon Go as well: "rounding" locations to be at the street even when the cat isn't even within BT range of the street. (For privacy reasons in PoGo's case, after multiple lawsuits.) The one time this is particularly annoying is when our fuzzball is hunting lizards in the local schoolyard at night, and the tracker says she's on the street next to the schoolyard, but she's somewhere in the middle of it. In practice, that means I know where my little darling was 10 minutes ago, rounded to the nearest street, and use a Bluetooth tracking app to narrow it down further. Naturally, a good third of the time, she's within BT range and just Not Interested™ in moving from wherever she happens to be. (We try to keep her fed on a regular schedule to reduce wildlife consumption.) We're going to try FindMyCat on the other cat (who currently doesn't have a tracker) and see how that goes. He spends more time at home.
gwoplock 3y ago
WiFi and LTE are too power intensive for a pet tracker in my opinion. Something like LoRaWAN would be ideal. In urban areas public LoRaWAN coverage already exists and where it doesn't the coverage of one gateway would likely be far greater than a cat's roaming range. Bandwidth shouldn't be an issue either as a GPS point (without elevation) would easily fit inside the smallest LoRa packet. You'd be able to do the switch over from low frequency check-ins to high frequency with the RX slot that comes after a TX slot, but the only issue would be having to wait for a check-in before the realtime mode is activated. But with a sufficient, ~5 minute, low-frequency check-in period, I'd imagine that's a small inconvenience.
- deirdresm 3y ago
  I've got a really wandery cat whose range is about 1-1.5km in any direction from the house. We try to keep her within 0.5km as much as possible. If we didn't manage her location fairly actively, she'd probably wander farther.
foobarqux 3y ago
One imperfect option is the Mictrack MT710 https://www.mictrack.com/product/cat-m1-nb-iot-pet-gps-tracker/ https://www.mictrack.com/product/cat-m1-nb-iot-pet-gps-track... A bit too big for a cat. Also doesn't have bluetooth or a speaker so you can't narrow the location once you get close (you could add an airtag for that, more $, more bulk). Waterproof. Relatively inexpensive. Has a documented API or you can use the Petovik app to track 1 item for free. Can change modes by sending a command through the SIM providers SMS command or through one of the tools linked in the Petovik app (the command is only received when the device is "awake"). The modes with highest resolution allows 10 sec updates. There is also a "LOCK" mode which lets you switch to high frequency updates for a specified period of time. Battery life is almost a day if you use "sleep when not moving mode" and set updates to every 2 minutes or so.
- deirdresm 3y ago
  Definitely too big. I use the FitBark GPS 2: https://help.fitbark.com/en/articles/6999814-what-are-the-fitbark-gps-2nd-gen-technical-specifications https://help.fitbark.com/en/articles/6999814-what-are-the-fi... Which is 47 mm x 30 mm x 15 mm vs the Mictrack's 46mm x 41mm x 16mm - and that 11 extra mm would make it not work on a collar. Fitbark does have Bluetooth.
- Mictrack 3y ago
  [dead]
lxe 3y ago
> I want to know when my cat leaves home I keep dreaming up a very simple (ish) solution involving a never-obstructed camera at ingress points like a doorway where it can reliably track whether the cat is in our out of the house without relying on a hefty device they have to wear.
lozenge 3y ago
Can you run a deliberately weak or inward facing Wi-Fi network? I don't understand how that location is too infrequent. Too infrequent for what? If you are trying to chase them around the garden then an audible ringer is going to be better than 15 second updates.
Mictrack 3y ago
[dead]

by leros 3y ago

deirdresm 3y ago

I've been using FitBark for the last 2-1/2 years. The catch is that my cat's use case (being mostly outdoors, mostly out of Bluetooth range, and mostly draining power) doesn't match the engineering design model of a dog who's with you most of the time and might escape on occasion. They gave me a more power-conserving build, though. The one anomaly here is one I've noticed with Pokémon Go as well: "rounding" locations to be at the street even when the cat isn't even within BT range of the street. (For privacy reasons in PoGo's case, after multiple lawsuits.) The one time this is particularly annoying is when our fuzzball is hunting lizards in the local schoolyard at night, and the tracker says she's on the street next to the schoolyard, but she's somewhere in the middle of it. In practice, that means I know where my little darling was 10 minutes ago, rounded to the nearest street, and use a Bluetooth tracking app to narrow it down further. Naturally, a good third of the time, she's within BT range and just Not Interested™ in moving from wherever she happens to be. (We try to keep her fed on a regular schedule to reduce wildlife consumption.) We're going to try FindMyCat on the other cat (who currently doesn't have a tracker) and see how that goes. He spends more time at home.

gwoplock 3y ago

WiFi and LTE are too power intensive for a pet tracker in my opinion. Something like LoRaWAN would be ideal. In urban areas public LoRaWAN coverage already exists and where it doesn't the coverage of one gateway would likely be far greater than a cat's roaming range. Bandwidth shouldn't be an issue either as a GPS point (without elevation) would easily fit inside the smallest LoRa packet. You'd be able to do the switch over from low frequency check-ins to high frequency with the RX slot that comes after a TX slot, but the only issue would be having to wait for a check-in before the realtime mode is activated. But with a sufficient, ~5 minute, low-frequency check-in period, I'd imagine that's a small inconvenience.

deirdresm 3y ago
I've got a really wandery cat whose range is about 1-1.5km in any direction from the house. We try to keep her within 0.5km as much as possible. If we didn't manage her location fairly actively, she'd probably wander farther.

foobarqux 3y ago

One imperfect option is the Mictrack MT710 https://www.mictrack.com/product/cat-m1-nb-iot-pet-gps-tracker/ https://www.mictrack.com/product/cat-m1-nb-iot-pet-gps-track... A bit too big for a cat. Also doesn't have bluetooth or a speaker so you can't narrow the location once you get close (you could add an airtag for that, more $, more bulk). Waterproof. Relatively inexpensive. Has a documented API or you can use the Petovik app to track 1 item for free. Can change modes by sending a command through the SIM providers SMS command or through one of the tools linked in the Petovik app (the command is only received when the device is "awake"). The modes with highest resolution allows 10 sec updates. There is also a "LOCK" mode which lets you switch to high frequency updates for a specified period of time. Battery life is almost a day if you use "sleep when not moving mode" and set updates to every 2 minutes or so.

deirdresm 3y ago
Definitely too big. I use the FitBark GPS 2: https://help.fitbark.com/en/articles/6999814-what-are-the-fitbark-gps-2nd-gen-technical-specifications https://help.fitbark.com/en/articles/6999814-what-are-the-fi... Which is 47 mm x 30 mm x 15 mm vs the Mictrack's 46mm x 41mm x 16mm - and that 11 extra mm would make it not work on a collar. Fitbark does have Bluetooth.
Mictrack 3y ago
[dead]

lxe 3y ago

> I want to know when my cat leaves home I keep dreaming up a very simple (ish) solution involving a never-obstructed camera at ingress points like a doorway where it can reliably track whether the cat is in our out of the house without relying on a hefty device they have to wear.

lozenge 3y ago

Can you run a deliberately weak or inward facing Wi-Fi network? I don't understand how that location is too infrequent. Too infrequent for what? If you are trying to chase them around the garden then an audible ringer is going to be better than 15 second updates.

Mictrack 3y ago

[dead]