[HN Gopher] Find my cat: open-source Cat Tracker
___________________________________________________________________
Find my cat: open-source Cat Tracker
Author : popey
Score : 496 points
Date : 2023-09-15 08:18 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.findmycat.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.findmycat.io)
| avh02 wrote:
| We're fostering a dog and it recently ran away while with one of
| the prospective adopters, was missing for a week. We retrieved
| her 7 km from where we were searching.
|
| After that I looked in to GPS trackers for pets and it's all
| either subscription services (and their implications on your
| data/privacy) or otherwise some cheap Chinese crap.
|
| I eventually found one of the cheap ones you could configure with
| traccar but to get that working took a lot of guessing and
| testing. The cool thing is the only command that works via the
| server is "change update period", so when it's at home it pings
| occasionally and when it's outside the geofence, traccar tells it
| to up the reporting rate. (Plus idle detection, so when her
| harness is hanging there's limited battery use)
|
| I'm glad to see an open solution like this, would have loved to
| set this up if I had the dog longer term.
|
| Our cats on the other hand, we never trained for a collar so this
| wouldn't work unfortunately
| [deleted]
| prmoustache wrote:
| cat is always in my path, so I just do `command -v cat`.
|
| If yours isn't I'd suggest setting up slocate.
| lynx23 wrote:
| One of my cats almost killed himself when he tried to remove the
| flea collar, and those are supposed to break. No, it didn't.
| Luckily, I was around and managed to cut the damn thing before it
| would suffocate my cat.
|
| Never _ever_ will I put anything artificial on a cat again, far
| too dangerous.
| qiine wrote:
| Collars are indeed dangerous for cats, maybe harness are a
| better options.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Harnesses would be just as bad, perhaps worse, for outdoor
| free roaming cats. The risk is that they get caught on a tree
| or fence and fail to release themselves. Alway use a collar
| designed to snap open when snagged.
| [deleted]
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| A few usage tips: - Whatever attachment system
| is used for animal attachment, it should break open under the
| cat's weight or less. Otherwise you are running a hanging-to-
| death-site locator. - A harness with the tracker mounted
| on the top (spine) seems more tolerable and robust than a collar
| - Remember it is a *"collar tracker"* for your expensive
| purchase, not a *"cat tracker"*, and you will remain satisfied.
| [deleted]
| benob wrote:
| Do they make a teenager-sized model?
| [deleted]
| mrmoos wrote:
| Most teenagers already carry a convenient tracking device
| ale42 wrote:
| Was going to say the same :-D
| pimlottc wrote:
| I looked around the pages but I couldn't see any cost info. I
| realize this is an open source project but it would still be nice
| to get a ballpark estimate on how much it would cost to build one
| of these yourself. Anyone know?
| witx wrote:
| Looks really good, and I'm happy there's an open source version
| of this. With that said, who's going to put such a big gadget
| around their cats' neck? I'm envisioning a cat getting stuck by
| that collar somewhere and suffocating. I think in its current
| version its better for big dogs
|
| Still I hope to see new and improved iteration of it!
| dhritzkiv wrote:
| Cat collars getting stuck can be a problem regardless of a
| bulky item being attached (though, it will probably be
| exacerbated by a tracker), so a breakaway/quick-release collar
| is a good idea in any case.
| michelb wrote:
| Looking at some existing tags this one looks small actually.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| They're pretty tiny. "Mr Lee CatTrack" did this in 2014 with
| little more than a SIM card and a gps, which was small. This
| one doesn't seem much bigger.
|
| Back in 2012 I was using a Zoombak for my cats, which was
| designed for dogs. Eventually one of them started getting less
| and less fur under his collar because the Zoombak was wiggling
| back and forth as he was running, causing the collar to chafe.
|
| He didn't seem to mind it though, and eventually he'd recognize
| my car as I drove to pick him up. He'd jump into the back seat
| like a dog right when the door opened. I miss that fella.
| michaelt wrote:
| There's small and there's small.
|
| For a traditional cat collar, you might have an engraved
| nametag the size of a quarter. Even an apple airtag is clunky
| in comparison - and this thing looks several times the size
| of an airtag.
|
| It's impressively small for something with LTE, and a multi-
| month battery life, it's just a lot bigger than a quarter.
| ajb wrote:
| This is great. Looks a tad big, would be good to know it's
| measurements
|
| The main missing thing from this is waterproof design. Doesn't
| need to survive immersion (unless you have a Turkish Van) but it
| will get damp as the cat pushes through wet undergrowth or if the
| cat gets caught by a sudden shower.
|
| Main things would be an ip67 rated usb connector, and a channel
| for rubber seal along the case join.
|
| (edited to add)
|
| From the STL, this is much bigger than a tabcat. The tabcat is
| 23x33x12mm in its silicone cover. This is ~27x60x13mm.
|
| Another handy feaure of the tabcat (although not essential) is a
| beeper.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I have an Apple tag on my cat.
|
| It's greatly helpful when they escape.
| lostNFound wrote:
| I have one too. It is useless considering the range is less
| than the maximum possible distance in a mid sized house.
|
| When she escapes I open Find My and I generally visually find
| the cat with my eyes before the phone even picks the signal up.
| It keeps the "Get closer..." and only actually shows the arrow
| when I'm like 5 meters from it.
|
| I have iPad iPhone Mac Apple TV Airpods, more stuff and a bunch
| of Apple services. Honestly my most disappointing Apple
| purchase.
|
| In case it matters, phone is 13 Pro.
| dmix wrote:
| Why not a kickstarter? I'd back this
| [deleted]
| brian_herman wrote:
| Is this compatible with doggies too?
| lambic wrote:
| and bikes?
| aqme28 wrote:
| I wonder if this has the same anti-stalking mechanisms that
| AirTags have.
| catlover76 wrote:
| People really should be letting their cats out to just roam
| around, it's (obviously) dangerous out there.
|
| But I support this nonetheless!
| [deleted]
| DrSarez wrote:
| The best cat tracker in the world:
|
| ```
|
| $ whereis cat
|
| cat: /bin/cat /usr/share/man/man1/cat.1
|
| ```
| totetsu wrote:
| which cat?
| yencabulator wrote:
| Yes, but definitely not command -v cat, commanding cats
| doesn't work.
| [deleted]
| scarmig wrote:
| To see which cat, you pipe it through cat.
|
| which cat | cat
| matricaria wrote:
| /bin/cat
| pimlottc wrote:
| Cat, son of cat
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_name#Arab_family_namin
| g...
| megapatch wrote:
| No surprise a hungry cat will eventually be found inside the
| bin.
| [deleted]
| wortelefant wrote:
| I need this for my bike, it should be easy to hide the tracker in
| or underneath the frame
| dghughes wrote:
| >Precise Find for Indoors.Comes with Ultra-wideband (UWB) ...
|
| I was playing with the UWB on my Samsung S23 my cat was beside
| me. As I enabled it she jerked her head towards my phone. I know
| UWB is far beyond a cat's hearing range but whatever it was she
| instantly noticed it. No pain or anything she didn't run away but
| looked at it as if she could detect something.
| seanthemon wrote:
| Could your cat perhaps have heard the sound of the whine of the
| electronic components? Maybe an interference with your phone
| and other electronics close by. Just a shot in the dark
| kstrauser wrote:
| UWB is RF, not sound, and your cat didn't hear it. It could be
| that the app you were playing with also happened to play a
| sound in addition to turning on the radio, or possibly your
| radio happens to resonate at some audible frequency.
|
| Consider that in the US, UWB is RF higher than 500MHz, and I'd
| be shocked if your phone's speaker went all the way up to
| 20KHz, which is generally considered to be the upper limit of
| the human hearing range.
| pndy wrote:
| Looks interesting but I can't imagine my cat wearing this - she'd
| try to remove it; case is quite big and would annoy her
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Indeed, it looks very large for a small feline to wear. It
| would be useful as a "find my large dog".
| Raed667 wrote:
| the answer to find my large dog is usually: snoring under the
| desk.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Your dog's mileage may vary, depending on breed and age of
| the dog.
| lagolinguini wrote:
| First prototype is great anyway. Could be made smaller over
| subsequent iterations!
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Wondering if flex PCBs would allow to redistribute some of
| the components _around_ the collar instead of having them as
| one big chunk.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Better to wait for v2 or later of "the ultimate solution for
| pet tracking" (from the video).
| WoodenChair wrote:
| How do you get cellular data coverage for an IOT device and how
| come the website says that it would only cost at most a couple of
| dollars a month? Which networks have a plan for hackers?
| jstarfish wrote:
| Verizon, for one. 100 location updates/mo for $1.50.
|
| https://thingspace.verizon.com/marketplace.html
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| I live on 20+ acres right now. I have an outdoor cat as a mouser.
| She'll disappear for days at a time and show up for a nap on the
| couch or to play with the kids and then be gone.
|
| I'd love to see what she gets up to when she's away since there
| really isn't any houses nearby (maybe 1/4 mile away at the
| closest). Unfortunately we don't have cell service outside of the
| booster range in the house so this wouldn't do much for me
| alana314 wrote:
| I'm curious about the UWB integration, I thought apple's Find My
| could only track airtags? Is it simulating one? And the only UWB
| dev kits / readers I can find are thousands of dollars.
| didip wrote:
| This looks great, I can put it on my kid.
| [deleted]
| Aissen wrote:
| Fascinating to see the dichotomy we have, even here on HN, with
| regards to subscription services. As a founder, they are great:
| recurring revenue ! But as a customer, of course they suck. I
| hope this inspires more companies to find a way to build more
| self-contained products.
|
| Even the awesome non-commercial, source available project here,
| findmycat, relies on a cloud service.
|
| For such a product, the cost could be quite low if done well, it
| could even be priced for 10 years in the initial package,
| assuming accounting is done properly.
| [deleted]
| rurban wrote:
| This is way too big for a simple cat GPS tracker. On AliExpress
| there are much smaller trackers, and much cheaper.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Most of these have a shit battery life, shit software and
| require GPS reception, this one does neither.
|
| You get what you pay for.
| tredre3 wrote:
| > Most of these have a shit battery life, shit software and
| require GPS reception, this one does neither.
|
| Find my cat needs GPS and LTE when outside your home, and has
| shit battery when using it, just like the commercial
| offering.
|
| The software is a fairly convoluted stack that you'll have to
| setup, self-host, and maintain. And that's shit from most
| people's POV.
| nerb wrote:
| Trackers haven't stopped me from taking the roaming cat problem
| into my own hands :)
| yreg wrote:
| What the hell?
| 0xFF0123 wrote:
| This is such a beautifully put together project!
| munificent wrote:
| The best way to keep track of your cat is to not let it outside.
| Benefits:
|
| 1. Zero cost for cat tracking devices, never need to charge them,
| never need to worry about the cat losing the device.
|
| 2. Dramatically reduced chance of your cat being killed by a car.
| Despite blogs claiming otherwise, I can find no reputable
| statistics on the number of pets killed by cars in the US, but
| there are >250k collisions with animals every year. Most are
| deer, but anecdotally I know many many people who have killed
| cats accidentally.
|
| 3. Dramatically reduced chance of your cat being killed by a
| coyote or raccoon. Yes, coyotes and raccoons will _absolutely_
| fuck up your cat. Yes, they are very likely in your city.
|
| 4. Your cat will not be playing a part in the wholesale slaughter
| of billions of birds, small mammals, reptiles, and other fauna
| that domesticated cats are responsible for.
|
| 5. Significantly longer predicted lifespan for your cat. The life
| expectancy for an indoor cat is about 14 years. For an outdoor
| cat, it's _2 to 5 years._
|
| 6. Your neighbors will appreciate not stumbling onto your cat's
| poop while gardening.
|
| Seriously, keep your cat indoors.
| orf wrote:
| What outdoor cat lives 2-5 years? How is this number meaningful
| when it's not compared across countries and urban environment?
| [deleted]
| deely3 wrote:
| What if cats are native animals here and live here for thousand
| of years?
|
| Maybe, it make sense to not generalize and firstly get some
| information where cats are more welcome and where not.
|
| Cats (as a predators) keep population of birds, small mammals,
| reptiles, and other fauna healthy. Or we should ignore this
| because its false?
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Where are household cats native animals?
| ignite wrote:
| My cat is an indoor cat. It wears a tracker. Cats escape,
| sometimes. This way we get an alert if he manages to get out.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Why'd you get a cat if you can't give it a proper life? I find
| it hard to believe that all areas/countries are equal here.
| Cats shouldn't be imprisoned if at all possible.
| matsemann wrote:
| I just checked. There is no coyotes or raccoons in my city. Not
| even anyone in my country!
| wffurr wrote:
| Oslo seems to be well within lynx territory, whom I am sure
| would be glad to snack on a housecat. Norway also has
| wolverines and in a few areas, wolves and bears.
| Fleusal wrote:
| The cat would have a terribly boring life.
| prvc wrote:
| How do you purport to know such a thing?
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Sure, if you don't take care of it or provide any
| stimulation. Part of having pets is taking care of them.
| nerb wrote:
| you can walk your cat on a leash. you can play with it to
| give it stimulation. letting your cat roam outside isn't a
| replacement for your laziness.
| dietr1ch wrote:
| > walk your cat on a leash
|
| I doubt any of the cats I've ever had would approve of this
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| I live in an apartment complex with lots of animals and I
| see several of my neighbors leash-walk their cats
| regularly.
|
| It just takes some time to train them usually. It's much
| easier if you get them used to it early in their
| lifetime, though.
| Grimblewald wrote:
| Mine adores her leash walks. Cats are naturally skittish
| animals, being both prey and predator. So if they trust
| you as a source of protection the comfort of walking
| without worries is a benefit that outweighs the
| restriction of the harness. Plus it's high quality
| bonding time.
| circuit10 wrote:
| Even if you have a good point people are going to be less
| likely to listen to you if you start calling them lazy.
| This comment would be better without the last sentence
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| How much more boring is our world becoming without our
| songbirds?
|
| https://daily.jstor.org/environmental-danger-outdoor-cats/
|
| There's the academic source, and for my anecdotal one my
| family's yard in Connecticut is much quieter on a June
| afternoon today than it was 20 years ago.
|
| There are responsible ways to keep indoor cats entertained.
| If someone can't do that, then it seems to me they're just as
| unsuited to having a pet as if they couldn't keep it fed.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Every time this comes up, anywhere on the internet, this
| comment more or less appears. Cats belong outdoors, they're
| animals. You ever see how miserable a cat is indoors once its
| been outside? It's torture. So what if they have a shorter
| lifespan or get killed by a coyote - that's the cost of letting
| an animal outdoors vs confining it to a box. People who have
| cats in small city apartments are especially cruel.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| ...do dogs belong outdoors?
|
| What about hamsters and guinea pigs?
|
| Plenty of cats are perfectly happy to remain indoors. I have
| a cat who was rescued from the streets as a kitten. She
| _actively refuses_ to go outside unless she is accompanied by
| a person, and even then, not for very long.
|
| But even if you do want to let your cats live outdoor lives,
| that's no reason to just let them loose on the environment.
| milin wrote:
| Wouldn't just using the iOS beacon have sufficed?
|
| Regardless the project looks very cool and informative.
| [deleted]
| herunan wrote:
| Love this project, although it makes me even more frustrated
| about how bad the pet-tracking business is right now. If you
| search for pet trackers on Amazon, it's all these pesky devices
| with awkward shapes, high subscription costs and bad battery
| life. It's pretty bad.
|
| I currently rely on an AirTag, and for the most part it's great
| as long as someone's iPhone is nearby. However, I'm missing that
| GPS component.
|
| I'd pay for this as I currently don't have the time to build it
| nor the experience in building PCBs. Could be a fun project at
| some point, though.
| troyvit wrote:
| I was looking for a similar service to keep track of my wallet
| because I lost it a few months ago. I ran into all the same
| problems you mentioned. It blew my mind that I couldn't find a
| small device that took a sim card and just transmitted its
| location. I ended up tying my wallet to my backpack.
|
| This cat tracker might just free my wallet from its paracord
| prison.
| ilyt wrote:
| From my own experience, keep it. Maybe replace paracord with
| nice chain.
|
| It prevents from losing the wallet in the first place, once
| it is lost it's a much bigger problem...
| [deleted]
| occams_chainsaw wrote:
| It's definitely on the expensive side, but the form factor on
| the newer fi collar model is _much_ better than before
| (important for me, having a small dog). Battery life is about
| as good (it dropped ~3-5% with a dogsitter as I was away for a
| week).
| doublepg23 wrote:
| +1 for Fi, my beagle doesn't mind the Gen 2 collar at all and
| it works great.
| ajja wrote:
| I burnt myself once when I didn't do enough research and bought
| whatever was first in the Google search results.
|
| Turned out to be a scam with legal address in farm in UK.
| Collar came but it was extremely poor quality, didn't match
| pics on the website, app was crap, GPS was not really working
| (it felt that it is tracking my phone's GPS that usually is
| off).
|
| Can't get to trying another product.
| phumberdroz wrote:
| We are using tractive for our cat. He is fairly active and the
| battery last around 2 days. Not awesome but also not that bad
| for the increased comfort that we know where he is.
|
| With the collar that comes with it, he loses it every couple of
| weeks usually nearby bushes but we always find it and
| everything is good to go from there.
|
| But it comes with a subscription.
| olabyne wrote:
| Yeah, it is thanks to the choice of a hybrid location service :
| at home it's only a few BLE packets and no 4G, but as soon the
| tracker is outside it's back to the hungry GPS chip and 4G
| data.
|
| You cannot expect a 4G + GPS to have a long battery life.
| ssl232 wrote:
| When I went down the rabbit hole of looking into pet trackers,
| the fact an iPhone needs to be nearby for AirTags to work is a
| problem to me, as well as the need for a SIM card in the
| tracker itself. I was thinking it could be nice to use a Zigbee
| type RF tranceiver as the range can be pretty fantastic [1] and
| they're very low power, and perhaps the base stations could
| forward messages they each received to each other to create a
| mesh across a neighbourhood to track far roaming cats. This
| wouldn't work for cats that go _really_ far (some can go
| several km in one day/night) but would for cats that only go a
| block or two. And the mesh could be used for any other item
| tracking needs too.
|
| [1] https://lowpowerlab.com/forum/rf-range-antennas-
| rfm69-librar...
| spacecadet wrote:
| Once again bunch armchair neckbeards downvoting and trolling
| people fully based on opinion.
|
| As a multiple cat owner with decades of experience and someone
| who has rescued many cats off the street in NY(T&R because yes
| its not good to have hundreds of strays per block), you
| downvoters have zero context here and your comments have been
| nothing but opinions.
|
| Heres a super simple usecase that can shut you all up. People
| have indoor cats escape! This is traumatizing to owners, like a
| family member being abducted. It can go on for months and yes,
| people find their pets (we did), at great cost and burden.
|
| And before you go claiming irresponsibility, this happen to us
| when someone broken into our unit. So fuck off please.
|
| There is research on how indoor cars live happier healthier lives
| that are yes 10x longer, because outdoor cats literally die at 1
| and 2 years old (they are adults) and indoor cats live to be 20+
| optymizer wrote:
| Just because you may be right when others may be wrong is not a
| valid reason to disrespect other people.
|
| "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of
| calling names."
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
|
| Downvoted and flagged.
| demondemidi wrote:
| Sad that a vitriolic rant with zero technical discussion is the
| top post. This is hacker news, not whinging news.
|
| I think the design is too big and the battery life too
| uncompelling but open source means better luck at being
| improved. Amazon sells a lot of bunk as I've tried a few and
| only had luck with jiobit. I'd like to tinker with this.
| spacecadet wrote:
| Actually agreed. I work in hardware and have given people all
| the same feedback to the question/realization that "my pets
| chip is not a tracker"... Its not practical to attach this to
| pet.
|
| And PS, I like to rant at hacker news, the community is so
| boring otherwise.
| devmor wrote:
| I have had my indoor cats get out before, it sucks. I currently
| have AirTags on their collars but something like this with real
| gps would be way better.
|
| I just wish it were smaller.
| wink wrote:
| All the people I know don't have collars on their indoor
| cats... that's the part where I was left scratching my head
| :P
| fullstop wrote:
| 3/4 of mine have collars with RFID tags on them to control
| how much food they get from the automated feeder. They
| didn't care for them too much at first, but they quickly
| learned that it was their meal ticket.
|
| The fourth cat doesn't have one because she can't eat
| kibble without it causing urinary problems.
| devmor wrote:
| Ours didn't used to, but when we hired someone to watch
| them while on vacation we realized it was a good idea. They
| could get out due to carelessness, or a broken window
| screen. They could also end up out and alone in the
| confusion of something like a house fire.
|
| A lot of people with indoor cats also leash train them.
| yakubin wrote:
| _> I was left scratching my head_
|
| I've heard a collar might help with that.
| wink wrote:
| Isn't that what the cone of shame is for? And I think my
| arms are relatively longer than the feline ones...
| aranw wrote:
| I find it sometimes genuinely upsetting to see the negativity
| in some comments. Different views are cool and for some people
| something might seem more obvious to them than to others, but
| there's a way to share without tearing down. Constructive
| feedback is one thing but no need to be negative for the sake
| of being negative
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| squarefoot wrote:
| If cats escape from their house, either the owners behave like
| royal a-holes with them, or very likely they were not
| spayed/neutered. I'm sorry for some self defined animal lovers,
| but by not spaying/neutering a domestic cat they're actually
| harming it, in a very cruel way. Cats aren't people: many times
| during their life they feel the _absolute urge_ to reproduce
| and cannot fight against this need with reasoning like humans
| because it 's purely an instinct that can become stressful and
| very dangerous for their physical and mental health if not
| satisfied. I've had family members who were against
| spaying/neutering and had all their cats escape, even multiple
| times by throwing themselves off the balcony (2nd floor
| luckily, they all survived), and all of them eventually
| developed very aggressive behavior against humans although they
| definitely were house cats.
|
| All my cats (all neutered) never tried to escape from our old
| city apartment, aside the obvious exploring the hall beyond the
| house door, and now that we live in a small town in a cottage
| with garden and trees my two cats both enjoy wandering around
| the property, but they eventually come home for the night. It
| wasn't that easy: they had to fight for territory since this
| property has been kept empty for years so that it was easily
| taken by the neighborhood cats, but so far it looks like our
| cats won.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| "my cats are this way therefore everyone's cats are this way"
| fullstop wrote:
| > If cats escape from their house, either the owners behave
| like royal a-holes with them, or very likely they were not
| spayed/neutered.
|
| Hard disagree here. All four of my cats are spayed or
| neutered and the one is determined to go out and explore. She
| will sneak behind your back and fly through the door as it
| closes. She looks peaceful and sleeping across the room, but
| don't let that fool you -- she springs to life and flies out
| the door when you least expect it.
|
| She once escaped through a basement window, about 6 feet
| above the floor with no objects below it, through a gap which
| was just a few inches wide. I got her back about three days
| later by setting up a motion activated camera and a bowl of
| food outside.
|
| I've fostered over 50 cats now so I feel like I know and
| understand their behavior pretty well by this point.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > All four of my cats are spayed or neutered and the one is
| determined to go out and explore.
|
| We don't disagree here, I never wrote that neutered/spayed
| cats don't want to explore, that's normal behavior for
| every feline out there, but that those who aren't can
| suffer a lot from being forced home. For cats which aren't
| spayed or neutered it isn't just about exploring anymore
| but satisfying their urge to mate, and they won't return
| until that need is satisfied, if they do.
| fullstop wrote:
| My choices were being an ahole or the cat wasn't spayed /
| neutered though.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > outdoor cats literally die at 1 and 2 years old (they are
| adults) and indoor cats live to be 20+
|
| Where do you live? We had outdoor cats live until they were 19
| and 17, both passed from age-related illness. Relatively calm
| neighborhood away from any heavy traffic, granted; but still.
| enlyth wrote:
| There seem to be large cultural differences and they have
| their reasons.
|
| For one, the average area of a house in the USA seems to be
| above 2000 square feet, whereas here in the UK it's more like
| 750 or so.
|
| It feels worse for the animal to be cramped in a tiny space
| all their life, so we let them outside. Also there are no
| predators apart from the occasional domesticated dog, so it's
| safer. The biggest risk is traffic, which is dependent on
| where you live.
|
| The bird thing brought up every time is weird to me, because
| no one seems to care about birds until cats are part of the
| conversation, suddenly birds are the most important part of
| the ecosystem.
| xeromal wrote:
| We learn new things over time. Birds are wildly important
| to the world's ecosystems. House cats, not so much. They're
| more useful to humans in keeping rodents away from our food
| but that's not as necessary these days.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| The supposed impact on bird life seems possibly quite
| overstated. Extensive personal experience suggests that (at
| least the cats that select me to live with) do not catch
| many birds at all.
|
| Of the current cat with free-ish outdoor access: Last year
| birds accounted for 3.6 percent of all recorded catches
| (5/138). This year birds are 1.7 percent of all recorded
| catches (1/58). And all of the birds I've seen caught first
| knocked themselves out striking windows, or flew inside the
| house via open door and injured themselves trying to escape
| in panic. The healthy ones don't let cats near them at all.
|
| Of the prior cat, zero birds over 9 years. Of the cat
| before that, maybe 1 or 2 birds over 18 years.
|
| Of course anecdotes aren't data etc, but, the impact of
| data is its story, and anecdotes direct and constrain the
| collection and analysis of data.
| nerb wrote:
| how are you going to be like "my anecdote is actually
| important" with an N of magnitude 100. long-term and
| wide-scale research and monitoring has tracked millions
| of birds and have used models to extrapolate to the
| billions. your comment means little more than nothing.
| have you considered you haven't seen the extent of what
| the roaming cat has killed? it won't always bring it back
| to you. and why is it that the non-bird animals aren't
| important? biodiversity reduction, not just birds. and
| you think that even if they are sick or injured catches
| that your cat isn't impacting the other animals? you
| realize other animals gotta eat? if they can't b/c your
| cat takes it, or worst infects it with a parasite by
| chomping on it, your local predators are gonna suffer.
| bborud wrote:
| I grew up on a farm (which my brother now owns). So my
| anecdata spans from roughly 1980 until today. The farm cats
| tended to have two very different life spans. The short lived
| ones died within their first 3 years. The long lived ones
| lived 16 years or longer. With most bunched up around 18-20
| years and the oldest two living to 25 and 27 years.
|
| We've had no cats that lived between 3 and 16 years.
|
| I have no idea why. To some degree you could get a sense
| which category a cat was in within the first year or so.
|
| If I were to guess I think a cat will probably have a shorter
| life span in a city. More cars and more opportunities to get
| infected with diseases from other cats.
| xoa wrote:
| I live in a rural area with indoor/outdoor cats and I've
| seen that too, honestly it feels like a pretty classic
| bathtub curve, or that curve showing experience vs survival
| whose name I'm spacing on, the one with the dangerous
| "knowing just enough to be overconfident and kill
| themselves" valley. Some cats are inherently more cautious,
| but in general over the decades my observation has been
| that in general cats are like humans who engage in risky
| but rewarding behavior be it work (factory, or devops for
| that matter cough) or sports such as rock climbing or
| kayaking. When someone (or some cat) is absolutely brand
| new to the world, nearly _everyone_ is very careful. Then
| they grow in comfort and experience, having learned a lot
| of the basic ropes, and in turn get more and more
| confident. But they haven 't had their first _crisis_ yet.
| Eventually comes the inflection point, where overconfidence
| leads to some sort of life /death (or losing the production
| database and holy shit are you fucked) moment with a rare
| event.
|
| Those cats (or people) who make it through that crisis will
| gain some hard humility forever more and seem to go on for
| a long time after. Those who don't, well, obviously that's
| it. I had two big male cats back in the 90s, who being
| tough young males naturally once they got to 2-3 years old
| felt pretty confident. First of them sadly vanished and
| never saw him again. The second a few years later got into
| some fight or flight with/from something, I don't know
| what, but there were shrieks. But he escaped/fought and I
| found him. Forever after he was very careful, he'd go out
| the door onto the porch and whereas before he'd just
| instantly head off, after he'd immediately sit down and
| observe/listen for a good long while first. He lived to 21
| years old. Another outdoor/indoor lived to 19.
|
| It is truly hard to take the risk, but they're so much
| happier for it. We all reach the same end in the end, so I
| feel very strongly that there are limits to how far one
| should take "being safe". And there are good ways to
| massively reduce the bird issue. I love birds as well, but
| 3-5 caught per year when I'm feeding and support orders of
| magnitude more birds than that seems acceptable.
| rurban wrote:
| This is only a stopgap measure until cats get their own cellphone
| devices. Then you can track them as your teenagers
| yencabulator wrote:
| This _is_ a cellphone device, LTE.
| [deleted]
| Tade0 wrote:
| My relatives showed me once how they track their children's
| every move and honestly I can't say I understand this idea -
| seems awfully intrusive.
| peteforde wrote:
| I think that this is brilliant. I'd buy two.
|
| Important to note that this fellow has already published detailed
| engineering notes, BOMs, all of the gerbers. I believe this
| really matters when taking this to KickStarter, which is exactly
| what he should do.
|
| One thing to consider is that many animals will not wear collars.
| However, they might wear a well-designed harness.
| nickserv wrote:
| We've tried GPS trackers, but I think you would need military
| level precision for it to be of any real use. 10 meters can
| easily be the difference between your yard and the neighbor's
| across the street.
| jiofj wrote:
| You have a nice cat but please don't use huge png files to show
| it to us.
| [deleted]
| slmjkdbtl wrote:
| Is there anything specific about cats that prevents this from
| being a generic thing tracker?
| ilyt wrote:
| Well it is probably bit too big for a hamster
| jaclaz wrote:
| The usual word of warning, if you are going to put a collar to a
| cat (or dog) free to roam, make sure that it will break with a
| force less than the pet's weight.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32660081
| [deleted]
| mft_ wrote:
| I'd be super-interested in buying this hardware. A few thoughts:
|
| 1) One of our (indoor, house) cats is always keen to escape, and
| as such currently wears a breakaway collar with an Airtag
| attached via a 3D-printed holder, which seemed the best available
| solution. He copes with that without a problem, so if this isn't
| too much bigger then I'm sure it would also be fine, and I'd
| definitely upgrade him to this hardware.
|
| 2) I know that this HN, and people love to be experts and poke at
| any available hole, but let's assume good intent and not go
| overboard on the 'dangerous collar' thing. I totally agree that
| the picture on the website is wrong, but it looks like a render,
| and as such has probably been farmed out to someone who doesn't
| know better. Stick this on a decent-quality breakaway collar and
| you should be fine. (Anecdata: of our two housecats, one will
| remove any breakaway collar within minutes; the other one doesn't
| care and his collar only comes off every few months if it gets
| caught during a cat-on-cat play-fight.)
|
| 3) Also agree that there's huge potential in this market for
| tracking many other things - proven by the success of the Airtag.
| [deleted]
| hoosieree wrote:
| My indoor cats: "challenge accepted".
| [deleted]
| shmde wrote:
| Can your cat sue you for violation of privacy ?
| politelemon wrote:
| Because these are HN cats, they will have willingly turned it
| over.
| watchblob wrote:
| You shouldn't put collars on cats. If you have to then it should
| be a quick release collar.
|
| https://www.rspca.org.uk/-/news-collar-warning-after-cat-die...
| politelemon wrote:
| This should be the top comment. The product being advertised
| here does not look safe for cats.
| TowerTall wrote:
| I came to write the same. I live in Thailand in a place with
| tons of jungle. It is common around here that cats die due to
| getting stuck in a tight spot because of the collar. I
| personally lost my first cat due to this. Now i am aware and
| will never put a collar on a cat if it hasn't got quick
| release. Such a horrible way to die. Quick release is for me a
| hard requirement.
| thecatspaw wrote:
| I agree.
|
| Of course you could add a quick release/stretchy part to the
| collar so it is safe, but that also means that the tracker
| would easily get lost (especially if the cat isnt used to
| collars since kittenhood, they tend to be too annoyed by them
| and try to remove them)
| TowerTall wrote:
| That is not a problem. It is a tracker. You can just go pick
| it up if is falls off
| ajb wrote:
| Have cats with a tabcat each. The safety collar comes off a
| couple of times a year, once or twice it's been
| inaccessible - neighbour won't let you in and cant find it
| themselves, on a roof, etc.
|
| For those worried about collars, I can confirm that
| https://www.coolcatcollars.co.uk collars do come off. You
| can also use a luggage scale to measure the force it takes
| to release.
| thecatspaw wrote:
| You're right, partially. Yes, you can track the tracker
| itself and go to that location. But that location might be
| inaccessible to humans, or the cat might drop the tracker
| somewhere where it gets unusable, say a bit of water for
| example.
|
| Also, whats the point of a tracker if its not on the cat?
| TowerTall wrote:
| Safety first. I can always buy a new tracker. If the cat
| got killed by the tracker what the point of the tracker
| in the first place?
| thecatspaw wrote:
| Of course safety first, I dont disagree in that. What I
| am saying is that I dont see a way to make this safe
| _and_ reliable at the same time
| TowerTall wrote:
| It's better that it "malfunction" and fall up by mistake
| than not falling off when needed.
|
| If it do falls off (by mistake or because the quick
| release did its intended job), at least you now have a
| good starting point where to go search for the cat.
| Assuming it doesn't fall off the very first day, you
| might also have a good idea or sense of in which area the
| cats normally goes strolling due to the tracking feature.
| ajb wrote:
| It's a numbers game. A tabcat used to be PS16 to replace
| the tracker, if you always replace, and they don't lose
| it _that_ frequently, then it 's highly likely that
| they'll have it in case of emergency. This device is
| probably more expensive to replace (and unfortunately the
| tabcat is now PS60 to replace, although you do get two
| trackers for that cost)
| mft_ wrote:
| > Also, what's the point of a tracker if it's not on the
| cat?
|
| Well, if your cat is one that tolerates a collar _most of
| the time_ , he'll have the tracker on _most of the time_
| , which is better than no tracking at all. One of our
| cats tolerates a collar without any problem.
| yencabulator wrote:
| > or the cat might drop the tracker somewhere where it
| gets unusable, say a bit of water for example.
|
| The dog GPS collars made by e.g. Whistle are waterproof,
| IPX8.
|
| You might not get a cell signal under a couple of feet of
| water, but that much water also means you probably aren't
| finding the gadget even if you have a recent GPS fix.
| [deleted]
| keb_ wrote:
| You should put collars on cats so that other people know the
| cat has a home. But yes, it should be a quick release collar.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| And put an orange collar on them to identify them as an
| escapee.
|
| https://ek.explodingkittens.com/kittyconvict
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _shouldn 't put collars on cats_
|
| For an indoor outdoor-occasionally GPS-tracked cat, collars are
| fine. There is no case where they will get themselves into
| trouble and be unaccompanied to ruin.
| uoaei wrote:
| Reminds me of this article from yesterday:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37511036
|
| And the old saying "knows just enough to be dangerous".
|
| The fact they got this far without knowing this safety
| information is concerning, to say the least.
| stephenr wrote:
| I mean, if you're concerned about the cat's health, keeping it
| indoors (or in a cat patio) is probably going to reduce the
| risks to the cats health way more than skipping a collar will,
| and you won't _need_ a collar.
| razemio wrote:
| Physically yes, mentally I would argue not so much.
| stephenr wrote:
| I'm not sure being terrorised by dogs is particularly good
| for a cats mental health either.
| prmoustache wrote:
| In some cases it is the opposite...but I guess you think
| you should be put under house arrest for your mental
| health too. There are so many dangers outside.
| NL807 wrote:
| People reporting on missing cats and such. The solution is
| simple: keep the indoors. That is the responsible thing to do.
| Cats are highly destructive to native fauna, they can get
| injured, die, breed, pick up parasites, or catch communicable
| diseases that may be incurable.
|
| Keep them indoors.
| WHYLEE1991 wrote:
| What if someone breaks into my house or I leave the door open
| for slightly too long? are both of these concepts THAT alien to
| you? lol.
| NL807 wrote:
| Whataboutism doesn't change the fact feral cats, or domestic
| cats going feral are significant pests in many parts of the
| world. My argument is about advocating responsible pet
| ownership of small predators that can easily stray and become
| an environmental problem.
| Namari wrote:
| What don't you do the same, stay indoor, humans too are highly
| destructive to fauna, they can get injured, die, breed, pick up
| parasites, or catch communicable diseases that may be
| incurable.
|
| All animals should be free, if you can't provide freedom to
| your animals then you should not have any.
| stephenr wrote:
| > if you can't provide freedom to your animals
|
| How free are they if you consider them _yours_?
| ivraatiems wrote:
| I genuinely don't understand why you feel the same rules
| ought to apply to humans and non-sapient animals, especially
| animals introduced into an environment by humans.
|
| What about the fact that animals introduced to an environment
| by humans in the name of "freedom" cause disproportionate
| harm to other animals? Whose freedom wins?
| Namari wrote:
| Just don't get a cat?
| ivraatiems wrote:
| That's a pretty big "just" for someone who grew up loving
| cats.
|
| I'm sure it seems easy to you to not have animal
| companions, but plenty of rational people place a lot
| more value on it than you do.
|
| Your point of view is based on faulty assumptions about
| the importance of that experience.
| keb_ wrote:
| If I'm understanding correctly, you're suggesting that all
| pet owners should disown their pets and let them free?
| Namari wrote:
| Do you have a pet or a slave pet?
| NL807 wrote:
| You are making an obtuse argument. You do realise pets are
| introduced species in many parts of the world, and actually
| end up being significant pests, right? Predatory pets like
| cats are especially destructive in most ecosystems, many
| small native species are vulnerable and end up being
| endangered, because they have not evolved a defence strategy
| against them. Places like Australia has a huge problem
| because of it.
|
| Again, keep your cat indoors. Otherwise, you're part of the
| problem.
| rcpt wrote:
| I've only been into cat discourse for a few months but in
| my experience it's almost a guarantee that someone will
| make the "humans are the real invasive species" argument to
| defend letting their cat out
| yencabulator wrote:
| Proving their point by demonstrating invasive behavior
| themselves!
| Namari wrote:
| You're the one who decide to take an animal as a pet,
| knowing all the damage it can do to the environment. If
| you're fine with it then that's ok for you but you can't
| force your pet to be in prison because you don't want it to
| kill other species, if that's the case then you should not
| consider getting one in the first place.
|
| Would you want to live in a cage your whole life? Then why
| do you want to do it to others? Never heard of the Golden
| Rule: "Don't do to others what you wouldn't want them to do
| to you"?
|
| I understand your point of view, I share it, cats are
| deadly to many smaller species that's why if you're against
| that then you shouldn't get a cat at all.
|
| PS: Australia's problem is about the Feral cats and they
| are making traps in the wild to poison their skin thanks to
| some box trap and AI.
| rockostrich wrote:
| > cats are deadly to many smaller species that's why if
| you're against that then you shouldn't get a cat at all.
|
| Many people who have cats do so by adoption of strays
| found in their area so not getting a cat is the same as
| letting a cat roam free in that area without a safe space
| and consistent food source.
|
| The whole "prisoner" argument seems so dumb to me when
| we've already decided as a society that it's in the best
| interests of society to neuter/spay as many cats and dogs
| as possible to prevent an explosion in the stray
| population. Do you think we shouldn't do that because you
| wouldn't neuter/spay yourself?
| Namari wrote:
| If they are strays why would you want to force them to be
| inside? I really don't get you.
|
| We can have both desexing pets and letting them roam
| free. No need to force them to live inside.
| NL807 wrote:
| Oh please, cats are perfectly fine indoors if they are
| raised that way. There are solutions, like building a
| catio, indoor platforms and so forth. You can even train
| them for walking on a leash in a park. If there is a will
| there is a way. But people are lazy and pretend letting
| cats out is not a problem.
|
| And if you are living in a shoebox yourself, where you
| regard your own home as a "prison" or a "cage", then you
| have no business keeping such a pet anyway.
|
| > PS: Australia's problem is about the Feral cats and
| they are making traps in the wild to poison their skin
| thanks to some box trap and AI.
|
| Feral AND domestic. There are laws introduced in
| Australia that mandates cats to be kept indoors for this
| reason.
| Namari wrote:
| Indeed I guess it depends of the size of the house.
|
| > Feral AND domestic. There are laws introduced in
| Australia that mandates cats to be kept indoors for this
| reason. I didn't know about the domestic one.
| slibhb wrote:
| It's not an obtuse argument. People value different things.
| You listed a bunch of things you value (lifespan of cat,
| not killing lots of birds, etc) but other people are
| uncomfortable preventing their cat that wants to go outside
| from going outside. They're weighing their cat's own
| preferences over the things you value and reasonable people
| can disagree over questions like this.
| NL807 wrote:
| It is an obtuse argument. Because they identify
| themselves in what I said earlier, got defensive about
| it, and then resorted to mental gymnastics in an attempt
| to absolve responsibility for the harm caused by their
| own pets.
| alphanumeric0 wrote:
| I understand where you're coming from, as they can be
| highly destructive and are to be blamed for some species
| on Pacific Islands going extinct! The humans who brought
| cats to such fragile ecosystems are clearly to blame.
|
| By and large, domestic US outdoor cats are not in fragile
| ecosystems, but they are the number one killer of birds.
| They roam outside along with other species (like
| squirrels and crows) that have had to adapt to the insane
| environment humans have developed.
|
| I've always seen my pets as persons, with feeling and
| moods. Trapping them inside is cruel. Cats in nature are
| adapted to roam and explore.
|
| My cat in the US regretably, has brought home a few
| birds, but all of the birds were species of least
| concern. Fortunately, there are a lot of cheap collars
| owners can use to help alert the bird of the cat's
| presence before predation occurs.
| sys32768 wrote:
| Your cat doesn't know which species are of least concern,
| and you certainly aren't seeing every bird or small
| mammal or reptile your cat kills for fun.
|
| I recently took a course on ornithology and was stunned
| by how difficult a bird's life is from the migrations,
| predations, building collisions, and the sheer amount of
| work they invest in nesting and raising their young. It's
| easy to take them for granted until you actually
| understand what they go through just to exist, unlike a
| pampered cat who gets to kill for sport.
|
| Cat owners who allow their cats outdoors are being cruel
| to birds and small animals, period. A bell on your cat's
| collar doesn't make much difference. There's no way to
| wiggle out of this moral dilemma. If you love nature and
| want it balanced and protected, then keep your cat
| indoors. Or, if you can, train your cat to kill only
| invasive species.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 https://www.na
| tionalgeographic.co.uk/animals/2020/09/the-232...
| https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/cats-and-birds/
| alphanumeric0 wrote:
| > Your cat doesn't know which species are of least
| concern, and you certainly aren't seeing every bird or
| small mammal or reptile your cat kills for fun.
|
| Of course they don't know which is of least concern, but
| by and large I do see everything they kill because they
| bring it home and I have to clean it up. It is in their
| nature to bring it home.
|
| > A bell on your cat's collar doesn't make much
| difference.
|
| Bells and other deterrents absolutely do make a
| difference (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/
| fevo.2022.85044...)
|
| There's barely any species of concern in urban
| environments anymore, because:
|
| * Industrial run-off * Habitat destruction * Roads and
| highways with vehicles * Air pollution * Light pollution
| * Poisons * Electrocution from power lines * Buildings
| with glass (actual a #2 killer of birds!) * Hunting (both
| legal and illegal)
|
| Domestic cats are merely a cherry on top of the myriad of
| environmental mistakes humans have made in the name of
| progress.
|
| They are simply acting on instinct and trying to be happy
| in a world of human creation.
|
| If you truly care about birds I would urge you to:
|
| * stop driving * use no lights past dusk * not use or
| consume any product that contributes to air pollution *
| not use any power grid that uses power lines * not use
| any building with glass * not consume any poultry
| sys32768 wrote:
| You forget that cats aren't always 100% in their kill
| rates. They also maim many critters who die sooner or
| later from their injuries.
|
| So while you pet and play with Fluffy that evening, the
| mother bird she maimed earlier that day can no longer
| make ~100 trips a day to feed its hatchings. She tries,
| but can only manage a dozen or so trips. They slowly
| starve over the next few days despite the mother's
| desperate attempts.
|
| That bird survived all the other leading causes of bird
| mortality, but not Fluffy. And Fluffy gets a few more
| bonus kills when the hatchlings expire.
|
| I'm curious what would you do if people had a new breed
| of small domesticated dog that is efficient at killing
| outdoor cats, and those people let that dog roam like a
| cat?
|
| Given that your cat is out there doing his thing, this
| new breed of outdoor dog is also out there doing his
| thing. As you said, they are simply acting on instinct
| and trying to be happy in a world of human creation.
|
| His owners think he's a person. It would be cruel to lock
| him up all day.
|
| But one of these dogs swiftly kills your outdoor cat. And
| your next cat. In fact, they're becoming the leading
| cause of death among outdoor cats, seconded only by cars.
|
| Would you a) demand that dog breed not be allowed to roam
| because it harms cats, b) keep your next cat indoors, or
| c) ?
| nerb wrote:
| 1. those collars don't work. birds didn't evolve
| alongside cat w/ flashy collars, so it doesn't always
| trigger flee instinct
|
| 2. if your cat wants to go outdoors, you can leash them
| like any dog-owner is required to do. the whole "cats
| need to be in nature" argument is rooted in the
| assumption that you as the owner aren't involved in that
| nourishment. if you can't be a responsible cat owner
| (keeping it from roaming on it's own; keeping it
| stimulated) then don't get a pet. is the cat really a
| critical unit of your family if you skirt responsibility
| and are okay w/ it dying violently outside?
|
| 3. the US is very much a fragile ecosystem. source on it
| not being? we, like many other place, have had a huge and
| trending decline in biodiversity.
|
| 4. cats haven't adapted to the human environment; we've
| developed technology and laws that have protected cats in
| our human environment. i'm not sure how they've had to
| adapt as they can interact with humans safely.
|
| 5. you don't see everything your cat kills. you may be
| able to placate yourself that your cat isn't one of the
| "rampant killers", but that thought isn't based solely on
| fact.
| dpeckett wrote:
| Or even better provide them a large outdoor catio / enclosure.
| Opportunity to play and access to a stimulating environment are
| so valuable for cat well-being.
|
| In a lot of ways cat's are still in the early phases of
| domestication and the concept of keeping them indoors only is
| rather new.
| plugin-baby wrote:
| Cats are native fauna in some places. If it's not suitable for
| a cat to go outdoors where you live, maybe just don't get a cat
| in the first place. Same for dogs, children, horses etc.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| ...what places? Cats (and dogs, and horses) are domesticated
| animals. They aren't "native" anywhere the same way a wild
| species is, they were bred by humans.
| JamesMcMinn wrote:
| The UK, Scotland in particular, as a starter for 10.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_wildcat
| FridayNightTV wrote:
| Amusingly, Scottish Wildcats are rare, going extinct
| because they are interbreeding with feral domestic cats.
|
| Your very post (and Wikipedia link) undermines the
| argument you are tying to make.
| JamesMcMinn wrote:
| What point do you think I am trying to make, exactly?
| Native fauna is defined as animals which historically
| have naturally occurred in the local area [1], and wild
| cats are by definition native fauna in Scotland, and
| across much of Europe.
|
| You are letting your very obvious personal bias determine
| your interpretation of what is an objective fact.
|
| [1] https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/native-
| fauna#:~:text=N....
| ivraatiems wrote:
| It's a faulty comparison, though. Domestic cats are _by
| definition_ not the same as any native cat. They are
| domesticated animals, more equivalent to dogs, cows, and
| chickens.
|
| So the discussion to have here is 'do we accept having
| domesticated animals in environments they didn't
| originate from'.
| JamesMcMinn wrote:
| It is in no way a faulty comparison. We did not
| domesticate cats in the same way that we did dogs, cows
| or chickens [1]. Wild cats found human populations useful
| because they attracted rodents. Humans found cats useful
| because dealt with rodents. A mutually beneficial
| relationship lasting thousands of years during which
| time, cats essentially domesticated themselves.
|
| [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/do
| mestica...
| nerb wrote:
| > domesticated themselves
|
| ... so they are domesticated and not native... ???
| JamesMcMinn wrote:
| Whatever do you mean? Something being domesticated has no
| bearing on wether or not is it native to an area.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| Domesticated animals are _different species_ than native
| flora and fauna. The domestic cat is taxonomically and
| genetically _not the same_ as a _any_ wild cat. The same
| goes for dogs, cattle, etc.
|
| By definition, domestic animals and plants have no native
| home except with humans. This is why we call domestic
| cats who escape and live in the wild "feral," not "wild,"
| because a feral animal is specifically a domestic animal
| not living with humans, not a non-domestic native animal.
| It does not matter whether they 'domesticated themselves'
| or not, they are a domestic species and therefore not
| equatable with a wild one.
|
| As a result, your point simply makes no sense. Domestic
| cats have no 'native lands' because they are not and
| cannot be 'native' anywhere except in human settlements.
| JamesMcMinn wrote:
| Did you actually read the article I linked to? I ask
| because actual evolutionary geneticists don't agree with
| you, and I'm likely to side with them on the genetics of
| the matter.
| [deleted]
| Extasia785 wrote:
| While cats are native in some places, evolutionary mechanisms
| stop working when a predator has an unlimited supply of food
| supplied by humans. The problem of cats nowadays isn't their
| existence, but that the amount of cats per square meter is
| more than the ecosystem can support. Usually this would
| easily balance out by the predator dying. But with humans
| feeding cats, they can rampage the ecosystem until it's
| destroyed without checks and balances. Feeding a predator and
| letting it outside is never suitable.
| sannee wrote:
| The lack of birds in the small town where my parents live, and
| dozens of semi-feral cats roam, is always rather unsettling.
| Meanwhile the parks in a city two orders of magnitude larger
| are bustling with activity, since the life expectancy of an
| outdoor cat here is close to zero.
| [deleted]
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Agreed as a cat person people should keep their cats indoors.
| It's better for the cat & better for the environment. Every
| outdoor childhood cat I had got hit by a car or ran away. None
| lived much past 5. My parents started to keep cats indoors and
| they lived 10..15+ years.
|
| That said, this product looks like it can help people who lose
| their indoor cats, which happens. I recently helped rescue a
| neighbors cat who snuck out and stayed outside for 2 full
| months.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Weird how nobody mentions that you can actually walk your cat
| - it's very different from walking a dog, but completely
| doable.
|
| Over time you can get rid of the leash and just walk side by
| side.
|
| My cat was 10 when we moved to a ground floor apartment, so
| we couldn't realistically prevent him from escaping, so we
| started walking him. He lived over 16 years, the last two of
| which he would only go outside to lay in the bushes.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Do you think maybe by making sure that generations of cats
| never experience the outdoors, perhaps you are breeding them
| to not know how to deal with the outdoors whenever they do
| get out?
| mft_ wrote:
| Even indoor cats can escape.
| ismayilzadan wrote:
| Why is this getting downvoted? Indoor cats always have a longer
| lifespan than outdoors. It is the right thing to keep cats
| indoors but provide plenty of indoor play & stimulation to keep
| them active.
| ajb wrote:
| It's getting downvoted because this varies hugely by
| location. In the UK, the life expectancy is not that
| different, there are no large predators, so the consensus of
| cat owners is that cats life richer lives if let out. If you
| live in the US your cat could be eaten by a mountain lion or
| coyote.
| FridayNightTV wrote:
| > In the UK, the life expectancy is not that different,
| there are no large predators
|
| No, but there is traffic and plenty of people who take
| objection to cats fouling their gardens and will happily
| leave out a saucer of antifreeze.
|
| If you live in an urban area, the kindest thing to do is
| keep you cat indoors.
| [deleted]
| IneffablePigeon wrote:
| This is pretty much the same attitude which leads to kids
| being wrapped in cotton wool, ferried everywhere in giant
| SUVs and never let outside to play. I find it a bit sad.
| FridayNightTV wrote:
| Not really. We teach children how to cross the road and
| children don't generally take a dump in the neighbours
| flower beds.
| nerb wrote:
| dude, it isn't a giant SUV divers that are advocating for
| indoor cats. they are the same people that hold onto the
| whimsy that "cats a natural and belong outdoors! :)"
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| The UK is one of the only places I've seen someone walking
| their cat without a leash
| elefanten wrote:
| It's not as "simple" as gp suggests, nor is it "the right
| thing". We really don't know what psychological and qol
| differences there are between the two... we've never been
| able to ask the cats. There are trade-offs, life expectancy
| being only one dimension of it. And in both cases (like the
| play you mention) there are mitigations to the downsides.
|
| Source: I've had both indoor and outdoor cats, including cats
| that transitioned to outdoor after being raised indoor. Lost
| one outdoor cat tragically in middle of his lifespan. But his
| equally-outdoor brother lived to 19, and all the outdoor cats
| hands down seemed happier on average (less lethargic, less
| neurotic, less obsessive, less overeating).
| stephenr wrote:
| You're being downvoted, I don't think people realise quite the
| difference it can make.
|
| One source suggests anywhere from 2x to 10x increase in life
| expectancy.
| almost wrote:
| So you're saying my cat could have lived up to 190 years if
| she was kept inside? Huge if true!
| stephenr wrote:
| Imagine my surprise that you don't understand what an
| average is.
| BitsOfBeard wrote:
| I keep my cat in a locked closet, and she is coming up on
| 267 years, still going strong! I used to hear her playing
| in there, but nowadays she's much more quiet.
| spacecadet wrote:
| Wow you both are bigger trolls and worse at math than me!
| agilob wrote:
| This shouldn't be for cats only, but a general OSS GPS tracker
| for vehicles too (I know it can be used for that), lots of people
| from home-assistant community will be interested in it.
| tyingq wrote:
| It's a common "market segmentation" approach. They can make
| different sites/pitches for other markets.
| michaelt wrote:
| It could probably track vehicles, sure.
|
| But vehicles don't need the indoor tracking, or the home base
| station, and when moving have nigh-unlimited battery power
| available.
|
| So I imagine it depends on how much those features are adding
| to the price. Also, it looks like the device isn't commercially
| available, and with BGAs etc it's not easy to DIY either.
| troyvit wrote:
| Dang, lost my car. _peeks under bed_ Theeeere you are lil '
| fella!
| deepspace wrote:
| Yes, this is mostly a solved problem for vehicles. I have a
| tracker in my car that does not even connect to the
| electrical system. It is a somewhat bulky brick with a
| battery that lasts 4-6 months. Smaller units are available,
| trading off battery life for size.
|
| The cost of the device is less than $100, excluding the
| cellular data cost.
| agilob wrote:
| Is it opensource tho?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Having had a catalytic converter stolen, I was hoping this was
| about those instead...
| yreg wrote:
| Well, you can slap it on one of those as well.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I have one of these for my dog (https://tryfi.com/) which has
| saved my GSD a number of times after running wild out in the
| woods of Northern Michigan. The battery lasts for months in
| normal operating mode but can be put into "lost mode" remotely
| where it will ping towers aggressively and give a precise
| location. This open source solution looks very polished and
| comprehensive though.
| ENadyr wrote:
| I'm impressed with this project! I built something similar a
| couple of years ago but it wasn't as polished. This is a prime
| example of a well-executed open-source hardware (OSHW) project.
|
| I also noticed, like others here, that the tracker's size is a
| problem. My cat managed to remove the collar with my smaller
| tracker in just two minutes. I've been considering designing an
| even more compact tracker, integrating it into the collar itself.
| It would include a battery, GPS, LoRa with an antenna, and a
| microcontroller with power management. I'd use a small Heltec
| LoRa+Bluetooth transceiver for this.
|
| Your work has inspired me to revisit my old project. Thanks!
| doakes wrote:
| I made something similar for my dog. Arduino Nano, GPS module,
| LoRa module, 18650 battery, and an antenna. I then had a "base
| station" using ESP8266 with a LoRa module and antenna that
| would forward the GPS data to the cloud. I was in a heavily
| wooded area and the LoRa signal would start dropping around
| 1000ft. I didn't know free SIM data was a possibility via
| Hologram.io or I probably would've gone that route.
|
| I really don't like the idea of attaching a lithium ion battery
| to my dog's neck, and I never learned how to design PCB's, so
| I'd also like to revisit my project with some improvements.
| poopbutt7 wrote:
| These days, I just let Strcat live his life. If he wants to move
| out, that's fine, his call. Just meow at the door if you change
| your mind.
| endisneigh wrote:
| As someone in the USA I've compared GPS to an Airtag and the
| difference hasn't shown to be different enough to bother with
| GPS. Considering how cheap an airtag is and the difference in
| battery life - it's a no brainer to use an airtag. The density of
| iOS devices in the USA is such that it's very comparable to GPS
| in my experience.
|
| This is a cool project, though. One thing I didn't see is, how
| much does it cost to make this in practice?
| r00fus wrote:
| I've thought about an AirTag for my cat, but she doesn't
| tolerate large collars well (meaning if she doesn't like it -
| it will get lost on a branch somewhere).
|
| Any way to shrink/lighten the AirTag?
| solardev wrote:
| I wish Androids had a way to talk to the Airtags :/ iphones
| have that cool proprietary technology that points you in the
| direction of the Airtag even if no other phones are nearby
| jsight wrote:
| Yeah, it is annoying that things like this aren't open
| standards.
|
| But that doesn't sell phones via lockin.
| LeSaucy wrote:
| I use that feature for finding my keys and wallet at least
| 2-3 a week. One of the many things keeping me on an iphone.
| flax wrote:
| That's Ultra Wide-band (UWB), and it's supported on several
| Android phones including Pixel 6/7 Pro. I don't know if the
| proprietary Apple bullshit prevents using Android to find
| them, but there are UWB trackers from Tile and Samsung as
| well.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > but there are UWB trackers from Tile and Samsung as well.
|
| I think the problem is that these trackers get a lot of
| their benefits from network effects. I own a bunch of
| Tiles, and I find them really useful, but if I lose my
| luggage somewhere I'll only get a ping if they happen to be
| in range of another phone that also has the Tile app.
|
| Meanwhile, with AirTags, given the prevalence of iPhones in
| the US, you're much likely to be in range of _someone_ with
| an iPhone at most times.
| xp84 wrote:
| 100%. That's the reason I would only buy something on the
| Find My network (have recently had great success with
| "ATUVOS" ones for about $12 each and one found on Temu
| for like $10ish) or maybe if there was another that would
| enjoy 90%+ coverage of Android phones - although I
| suspect the fragmentation and unavailability of system
| updates to many devices that aren't brand new would mean
| it would take 5 years for such a network to be built.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| I think Google is actually working on this:
|
| > In addition, Google is updating its Find My Device
| experience to make it easier to locate devices by ringing
| them or viewing their location on a map -- even if
| they're offline, it says.
|
| > This, too, will arrive later this summer, along with
| new support for Bluetooth trackers from Tile, Chipolo,
| and Pebblebee, as well as audio devices like Pixel Buds
| and headphones from Sony and JBL.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/10/googles-find-my-device-
| net...
| up6w6 wrote:
| Check out https://github.com/seemoo-lab/openhaystack
| somehnguy wrote:
| My partner runs an at-home business that results in people
| coming & going a bunch throughout the day - so we put AirTag
| collars on all 3 of our cats for peace of mind. So far none
| have gotten out but even in the home it's nice to just open the
| 'Find My' app & know exactly where cat X is when you can't seem
| to find them.
|
| My only hope is that in the future Apple designs an AirTag mini
| of sorts. Right now they're _juust_ on the edge of being too
| big to keep strapped around their necks. They don 't really
| seem to care, even at the current size, though.
| Timothycquinn wrote:
| I did a very rough BOM analysis of just the raw components and
| if you buy them at their highest rate (1pc cutoffs), the raw
| component cost excluding the PCB was about $100 USD. My guess
| is you would be looking at about $200.
|
| Personally, I would be jumping in if I could buy a fully
| populated PCB and take care of 3D printing, final assembly and
| software. However, doing electronics like this is far out of my
| wheelhouse.
| Paul-Craft wrote:
| Thanks, this was very helpful to me. At $200 with no
| subscription fees, I would definitely consider one of these
| for my dog. :)
| jonathankoren wrote:
| So I put an AirTag on my cat, who promptly lost it in about a
| week.
|
| I only know very roughly where the tag is. Its location is
| still being updated after two years. (Lost mode activated: Sept
| 6, 2021. Last seen 16 minutes ago.) I used to think it was two
| doors down, but its somewhere near the end of the block.
|
| That's it. I have no better idea, because I have to be near it
| to make it beep, and I can't make it beep. The arrow mode
| doesn't trigger because I'm not close enough to it. Once -- and
| only once -- did the signal get strong enough to trigger mode,
| but it went away before I could do anything.
|
| AirTags kind of suck. Even when I was playing with the tag in
| the house, I could only get the beep/arrow mode to work when I
| was in the same room with it, and at that point, I could
| literally see it.
| petsfed wrote:
| I live out in the sticks, and the whole reason I invested in a
| GPS/LTE collar for my dog is because there are broad swaths
| where he'd only be in range of an apple device if he had line-
| of-sight to it. Considering his favorite exploring path is the
| creek bed set 8 feet below grade, that means he'll just
| disappear.
|
| I'd love to own the data from that collar, but I also looked
| into the BOM of doing this, and (considering what my time is
| worth doing the full-stack embedded electronics thing) it was
| absolutely cheaper to buy it and lose access to the data. It's
| a lot cheaper than fully fencing 2.5 acres out in the country.
| dmix wrote:
| My friend lives in a suburb of a city and her cat's airtag
| rarely went off enough to be useful. He mostly hangs out in
| the bushes where she was most worried about not finding him.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Honestly if that's the only spot where there's an issue I'd
| get an old iPad LTE and solar panel and permanently mount it
| somewhere with solar. Then the airtag will be able to find
| your doggo there as well.
|
| It's cheaper than fencing thousands of feet of perimeter,
| anyway.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > i'd love to own the data from that collar
|
| why not get him an Apple watch and put it in an exercise mode
| so it records GPS coords as he goes, synced to his own iCloud
| account?
| matsemann wrote:
| Which is what, 10 times as expensive as something purpose
| made like https://tractive.com/ ?
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| that looks even better: agreed.
| petsfed wrote:
| There's also the issue of keeping him on our land. There's
| added correction capabilities (first a signal noise, then a
| mild shock) as part of the Halo collar that we got him. And
| an entire training program that comes with it, so prior to
| enabling the feedback mechanisms, I train with him so its
| not just a bolt from the blue.
|
| He's an 80lb Belgian Malinois, a breed known for their high
| drive, and for being pretty scary looking. People out here
| keep goats, horses, chickens, etc. He knows not to go after
| _our_ chickens, but do the neighbors know he won 't go
| after theirs? The last thing I want is for him to wander
| onto a neighbor's property and get shot because he looks
| like he's helping himself to their livestock. He'll get
| shot for that (or less), and I'd have zero recourse, even
| legally.
|
| The Halo collar is the exact same price (including data
| plan) as the apple watch, but I trade remote feedback to
| him if he leaves the property (and a collar ruggedized to
| the rigors of an active dog), vs owning the data, but on a
| device that's not at all designed to be worn by a dog that
| likes to roll in dead fish and coyote shit. Meanwhile,
| adequately fencing the property (so he won't jump over it)
| will cost me between $12k and $30k. Compare that to $700 +
| $5/month.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| If he gets shot, will you wish you had fenced the
| property?
|
| > a dog that likes to roll in dead fish and coyote shit
|
| that is like every normal dog, at least I know exactly
| what you describe!
| petsfed wrote:
| Are you asking me if, in the situation where my failure
| to build a $12k-$30k fence (for materials _alone_ , not
| including labor, and the environmental impact survey that
| has to go along with 1200 linear feet of 6' high fencing
| in a wildlife corridor) gets my dog shot, will I wish
| that I spent tens of thousands of dollars when the ~$1000
| or so I spent on equipment, and a few weeks' worth of
| after-work training should have done the trick?
|
| No, I won't wish I had fenced the property. I'll wish I'd
| done a better job of training my dog.
| porkbeer wrote:
| Fences deprive wildlife of free movement, and I can only
| imagine the upkeep on one that big.
| xp84 wrote:
| I'm guessing the big downside to that is that an Apple
| Watch running a workout continuously has a battery life of
| maybe 6-8 hours at best, so you'd have to buy at least 2 of
| them and fiddle with them several times a day to swap them
| and start a workout. And also they cost $300 each but I
| haven't looked at what any other option costs, admittedly.
| rapunkill wrote:
| Friendly reminder that most of us live in places where cats are
| non-native and should therefore either keep them indoors or on a
| leash.
| [deleted]
| opafan wrote:
| k
| thefz wrote:
| Absolutely no way this could be exploited to harm humans like it
| already happens with AirTag, no way sir.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| I think the err... cat is out of the bag on this one. The
| market is already saturated with trackers.
|
| Plus, this doesn't have the same potential for abuse as it has
| more limited battery life than NFC beacons.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Very cute comment, enjoyed that one ^Y=^
| eterevsky wrote:
| I would immediately buy those for my three cats. We are currently
| using Tractive and the battery barely lasts a whole day.
| phumberdroz wrote:
| I had issues as well and reached out to their support they
| provided me with detailed graphs of the battery usage over time
| and when the cat was in the wifi zone where it does seem to
| turn off the gps as well as mobile network to safe energy.
|
| I adjusted my wifi to cover a bit more of my garden area and
| since then battery life has increased to 2-3 days.
| wccrawford wrote:
| We're using Tractive with our dog and regularly get a full
| week. And that includes 2-3 walks per day that are outside of
| the wifi zone.
| hyperific wrote:
| You won't need to track them if they're always indoors. Please
| keep your feline friends indoors. Cats are horrible for local
| lizard and bird populations.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| What if they escape?
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Basically a neat wrapper over nRF9160 and the services that
| Nordic Semi provides. Cool
| andix wrote:
| How do you get your cat to wear that? Isn't wearing a collar for
| a cat some kind of torture? All the cats I ever had were
| extremely unhappy with collars and often found a way to get rid
| of it.
| al_be_back wrote:
| I think these trackers create privacy issues since these furry
| friends regularly traverse the neighborhood (walk on fences,
| walls, roofs, enter homes etc).
|
| would be nice to see on the 'Why' page [1] stats around pets
| lost, stolen, the need to track, bit about price etc.
|
| as an engineering IOT project it's exciting for sure, looks good.
|
| [1] https://www.findmycat.io/why
| michaelt wrote:
| What's the privacy issue?
|
| I mean, it doesn't impact my privacy if a GPS-tracked van
| drives past my home.
| al_be_back wrote:
| like i said above, cats typically tend to "walk on walls,
| fences, enter other's homes etc" ... the cat strapped with a
| watch-sized device could be used to monitor/record (not
| necessary this proj).
|
| cameras and microphones are very cheap these days.
|
| of course if one's not bothered about privacy, then the issue
| doesn't exist (magic)
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| Maybe the cat decides to live a double life with some other
| family and doesn't want the first one to know about it?
| batch12 wrote:
| [flagged]
| swader999 wrote:
| OnlyCats?
| gruturo wrote:
| I'm guessing something along the lines of FindMyPussy.
| batch12 wrote:
| PawPatrol, geez.
| prvc wrote:
| Cats should not be left to roam freely in cities. They would
| catch and spread incurable parasites (including to humans), and
| they would be exposed to various other dangers, such as getting
| hit by cars or attacking or being attacked by other animals.
| Furthermore, they leave droppings, and other messes, such as the
| corpses of the animals they kill, and they damage bird
| populations. Keep housecats indoors, and do not feed feral cats.
| [deleted]
| ivraatiems wrote:
| This is absolutely true. I feel conflicted about feeding feral
| cats, because I don't love the amount of suffering they often
| endure, but I think the appropriate middle ground is to support
| trap/neuter/release (TNR) programs if you're going to engage
| with feral or domestic-but-outdoor cats.
|
| If they can't reproduce, then feeding them actually _reduces_
| the harm they cause because they won 't need to go out hunting
| for food.
|
| I will say, though, as someone with cats who are escape
| artists, I love this product, I'd find it invaluable. We
| already have AirTags on them but it's an imperfect solution.
| prvc wrote:
| >If they can't reproduce, then feeding them actually reduces
| the harm they cause because they won't need to go out hunting
| for food.
|
| That's completely unfounded speculation and wishful-thinking.
|
| Would you like for cats to deposit their parasite-laden
| (human-infecting, incurable) feces in your herb garden, where
| your children play, or directly outside of a window you need
| for ventilation? If so, than there are certainly others who
| would not. Basic decency demands that you don't facilitate
| this.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| > That's completely unfounded speculation and wishful-
| thinking.
|
| It's not 'speculation' to suggest that logically, an animal
| which is not hungry won't expend energy to hunt for food.
|
| > Basic decency demands that you don't facilitate this.
|
| Basic decency demands showing compassion to animals in
| need. But if there's one thing I'm seeing in this thread,
| it's lots of people who seem to think their views on these
| matters are moral universals.
|
| > Would you like for cats to deposit their parasite-laden
| (human-infecting, incurable) feces in your herb garden,
| where your children play, or directly outside of a window
| you need for ventilation?
|
| Do you even know how cats decide where to poop, or what
| they do with their feces? Cat feces doesn't just sit out,
| they _bury_ them. While it 's true feral animals -
| including many cats - harbor parasites, healthy cats are
| typically fastidiously clean. Much cleaner than dogs, and I
| should know, I have both.
|
| You have awfully strong opinions but they don't seem like
| they're based in much knowledge.
| prvc wrote:
| >It's not 'speculation' to suggest that logically, an
| animal which is not hungry won't expend energy to hunt
| for food.
|
| Your argument remains as merely some vague hand-waving,
| still with no evidence presented.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| It feels like you're being deliberately obtuse, but, here
| you go:
|
| https://www.unitedspayalliance.org/feral-cats-if-you-
| feed-th... https://www.felina-sicily.org/en/how-to/to-
| feed-or-not/ https://www.feralcats.com/good-neighbor
| https://spayneuterspringfield.org/feral-cat-info
|
| and here's a study describing what happens when one
| doesn't take this approach:
|
| https://www.dvm360.com/view/feral-cats-fed-not-cared
|
| All of these were on the first page of Google for
| 'feeding neutered feral cats only if fixed' or 'feeding
| neutered feral cats only if fixed study'
|
| What I'm suggesting is standard and recommended practice.
| prvc wrote:
| Those are advocacy websites (run by toxo+ cat lunatics),
| not reputable scientific publications.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| I literally cited a scientific study as my final link.
|
| But given that you think people who like cats are "toxo+
| cat lunatics," I think there's no productivity in this
| exchange. You clearly have some really strong biases, and
| you've made clear what I was already inferring from your
| comments - you won't agree with anything that doesn't
| support your incorrect viewpoint.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Cats always roamed outdoors. like kids used to do. It is a
| fucking part of life dying, having diseases.
|
| Keep your cat vaccines up-to-date, neuter them and have regular
| checkups. An indoor cat is a miserable life, intended to be an
| object of some over-controlling miserable person who is afraid
| of life and want everyone else to be as miserable, paranoid and
| afraid as them.
| tonymillion wrote:
| Enjoy your toxoplasmosis, and subsequent schizophrenic
| symptoms... but at least your cats got to hunt all the
| diseased rats they like, right?
| [deleted]
| elzbardico wrote:
| And, According the the Centers for Disease Control and
| Prevention, you have a much higher likelihood of
| contracting the disease from eating raw meat or from
| gardening.
|
| But I guess you don't do much of either.
|
| The thing is, like everyone of us, you'll die someday,
| you'll get sick, probably even very sick as you age. You
| can't cheat death, disease and suffering for ever. You can
| do the reasonable stuff to take care of you, avoiding
| really stupid stuff like DUI, hard drugs, cigarretes,
| excessive drinking, too much sugar, but you need to
| understand that this only goes so far, and that in average,
| it is not liking you are going to double your lifespan if
| you became completely anal about preventing risk. Sooner or
| later, no much how paranoid you are your cellular machinery
| will star failing, and no, you won't be able to upload your
| life to the cloud and live forever in the metaverse as much
| as your average incult billionaire tech bro believes.
|
| And when this day comes, the question that really matters
| is not if you are going to die soon, but wether you have
| ever lived.
|
| Now, you are free, and if you want to live in a super-
| afraid-karen modem the rest of your life, none of our
| business. But don't force an animal to share your miserable
| outlook of life. If you are so worried about the cat
| bringing those dangerous germs to your house, nobody is
| forcing you to have a cat.
| nerb wrote:
| [flagged]
| prvc wrote:
| >According the the Centers for Disease Control and
| Prevention, you have a much higher likelihood of
| contracting the disease from eating raw meat or from
| gardening
|
| Cats deposit the parasite in gardens, so your suggestion
| that this vector of infection is unrelated to roaming
| cats is misleading.
| nerb wrote:
| wow, what a spiteful, judgemental message. people always beat
| their children to discipline, so should we keep that relic
| from the past even though we know better? a cat indoors is
| not miserable; rather you lack creativity to get it the
| stimulus it needs in a way that doesn't thrust the problems
| of an outdoor cat onto your local community. outdoor cats are
| for people who like the idea of having a pet, but don't want
| all the responsibility to take care of it and instead relies
| on the local environment to provide it with all of its needs.
| you force non-cat owners to subsidize outdoor cat ownership.
| y'all are a draw on our society holding onto this idea cats
| need to be outdoors b/c you have a naive view of what is
| "natural". you think your cat is being in nature, but it's
| more akin to a state-sponsored killer. you think wild animals
| get the benefit of having a guaranteed source of food,
| shelter, and disease prevention?
| demondemidi wrote:
| Months of battery life with gps is impossible.
|
| It is 20 hours in gps mode:
|
| https://www.findmycat.io/docs/TrackerModes#summary
|
| I have a Jiobit. It starts in ble mode and switches to gps when
| the cat exits a 30 m radius. It gets about 8 hours of fulll gps
| gsm battery life once it starts updating every 60 seconds.
| Normally it is 2 weeks battery life.
|
| Note I take my cat out supervised in a large fenced in yard. He
| got away from me thrice over seven years. This is just a
| temporary safety feature now. He's never ventured more than 100m
| during his getaways.
| h1fra wrote:
| I don't know much about GPS, but I always assumed it was a
| passive tech. What is consuming battery in that case?
| krisoft wrote:
| It is a lot of work to acquire and track the signals and this
| is often implemented in software. And then afterwards it
| takes a lot of work to calculate the navigational solution
| from these raw measurements.
|
| This basically keeps a microprocessor busy which uses energy.
|
| One trick people do for ultra-low energy non-realtime GPS
| tracking of wildlife is to store the "raw" radio samples and
| do as little processing on the tracking device as
| possible.[1] Then once the tracker gets back they batch
| process all the samples recorded and reconstruct where the
| animal has been. That is obviously a tradeoff of more storage
| used for less energy consumption. Obviously that trick does
| not work if you want to know where the animal is live, it can
| only tell you where it has been once you have processed the
| data.
|
| 1: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.06310
| OmarShehata wrote:
| > Obviously that trick does not work if you want to know
| where the animal is live, it can only tell you where it has
| been once you have processed the data.
|
| why can't you just forward those radio samples back, and
| process that on the receiver end (your phone), vs
| processing on device and sending back the location?
|
| It should be a tradeoff of less battery consumption on
| device, and no need for large storage, at the expense of a
| lot more bandwidth? Would having to send all the raw
| samples consume more or less battery than just processing
| it and sending the result?
| krisoft wrote:
| > It should be a tradeoff of less battery consumption on
| device, and no need for large storage, at the expense of
| a lot more bandwidth?
|
| Yes. I believe so.
|
| > Would having to send all the raw samples consume more
| or less battery than just processing it and sending the
| result?
|
| Good question. I don't know the answer to that. Maybe
| someone can chime in?
|
| What would be interesting if you could send a "ping"
| signal to the tracker and it only start sending samples
| back then. After all most of the time you don't need to
| know where the cat is, only when it is "overdue" and the
| owner starts worrying.
| dhosek wrote:
| One of the things I found initially surprising (but less
| so when I thought about it), was that when I switched
| from wired headphones to bluetooth, I got longer battery
| life from my phone. Apparently, there's less energy
| involved in sending a radio signal than in driving a
| speaker.
| lxgr wrote:
| I'd guess that it would take more energy to send all of
| the samples to a central server over an IoT network
| (which are optimized for infrequent, very small messages)
| than to calculate a position fix locally.
|
| Maybe it might be worth it for a complete "from scratch"
| GPS fix (where the receiver needs to figure out where it
| approximately is and needs to re-download the complete
| GPS almanach and ephemerides), though - I have no idea
| how short a server-side-decodeable sample actually is!
|
| But since we're talking about a network-connected device
| anyway, I'd guess that downloading the ephemerides via
| the IoT connection (single-digit kilobytes) would be much
| more economical in that case too.
|
| Maybe as an analogy, consider local vs. cloud QR code
| decoding: If you can manage to send a single, shart photo
| of the code, the cloud might be better, but since you
| can't actually be sure when the camera is pointed at the
| code and not moving, you might need to take a minute-long
| video, and look for the one non-blurry frame on the
| cloud.
|
| Edit: Just saw the other comment - apparently we're
| talking about a short video moreso than a small JPEG :)
|
| And here's an interesting research paper on the topic:
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-
| content/uploads/...
| lozenge wrote:
| Sending to your phone via the cell network? That will be
| a lot of battery usage.
|
| Sending to your phone via radio? If the phone is in range
| you don't need GPS. You can use UWB or an audible beeper
| to find the cat.
| iracigt wrote:
| The "chip rate" of GPS L1 C/A (the main one) is 1023
| kchips/sec. So you end up with a signal that is over 1
| MHz wide to encode 50 bits/sec. Nyquist-Shannon theorem
| says* you thus need over 1 Msamp/sec (using complex
| numbers), probably more like 2 Msps because of Doppler,
| to capture that. GPS is pretty forgiving and 4
| bits/sample is plenty (2 bits is usable), but that would
| still be 1 MB/s of high entropy data. Note the system
| linked in the parent comment only records in 12 ms
| bursts. That captures enough info to find position
| offline, but only if you add in the historical orbit
| information that normally takes 30 sec to download off of
| the GPS signal. Streaming 1 MBps of data is doable, but I
| think would draw much more power than solving on device.
| Just recording to an SD card is far less.
|
| * The Nyquist-Shannon theorem actually says the converse,
| but for anything you'll encounter outside the recesses of
| a math department, it's still the optimal solution.
| solardev wrote:
| Really? It's the math that's power hungry, not something to
| do with the antenna or whatever...? I'm surprised.
| FridayNightTV wrote:
| I'm surprised you think otherwise.
|
| "Ordinary" antennas are completely passive, just a bit of
| metal. It's the maths for data recovery and trilateration
| (not triangulation!) that is processor heavy.
| ilyt wrote:
| RF part is also power hungry; the chip they use for
| example uses 15mA during receiving.
| h1fra wrote:
| Ah I see, the continuous tracking is the culprit here.
| Thanks
| joshspankit wrote:
| Are there no hobby-level GPS chips that do hardware
| decoding?
| krisoft wrote:
| What do you mean by "hardware decoding"? There are custom
| chips which do the whole GNSS business. So they are doing
| "hardware decoding", the chip is the hardware.
|
| I'm not aware of how all of them are implemented
| internally, but my understanding is that the
| acquisition&tracking of signals usually happens in the
| digital domain. Can be wrong on that of course.
| joshspankit wrote:
| "hardware decoding" in this case meaning "implemented at
| the transistor level" and more to the point: "as
| optimized and low-power as possible".
| iracigt wrote:
| All of them I am aware of do hardware decoding of the
| signal and do the linear algebra to find their location
| in software. Speaking mostly based on the cheap ublox
| chips and partially open source navspark chips I've dealt
| with.
|
| The problem is the signal processing part of GPS is quite
| computationally difficult. I think it was around 10ish
| years ago it even became possible to do the full real-
| time decoding on a laptop. At startup, you need to find
| the GPS signals. This means searching for all 32 possible
| satellite code patterns across the range of possible
| Doppler shifts. During testing, this was what took most
| of the startup (cold start) time. You need roughly 4-6 of
| them to get a position, so this has to be done in
| parallel. Once you've found the satellite it takes
| another 30 seconds to get the satellite position. GPS
| signals are very slow at 50 bits/sec.
|
| By comparison, actually solving for location is a simple
| linear algebra problem with 4 unknowns (lat, long, alt,
| time; but in a more convenient coordinate system). You
| only do this a few times per second. The hardware does
| the higher rate signal phase estimation. For example the
| navspark is a single core SPARC microcontroller running
| at 100MHz with 200 kB of RAM. That's enough to do 50
| solutions per second, though they reduced that to 10 Hz
| to make space for a user program too.
|
| A ton of work goes into caching strategies to narrow down
| that initial search space. Modern chips will let you load
| in exactly which satellites to expect overhead (e.g.
| based on position and orbit info from cell network).
| There is a whole other caching strategy based on a
| approximate "almanac" in the GPS signal for offline
| devices. With all of that known before the receiver turns
| on, you can get a solution in a couple seconds.
| ilyt wrote:
| The fact GPS satellites are 20k km away
|
| Weak signal, small antenna, high gain, lots of current to run
| amplifiers. And you need to keep receiving signal to get the
| position, not just enable it for a second then disable
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| GPS receivers are passive only in the sense that they don't
| transmit. But pulling a meaningful signal from a 25W
| transmitter 20,000 km away requires some seriously power-
| hungry signal processing. It's an engineering miracle that it
| works at all.
| dboreham wrote:
| It's not passive. There's a bunch of DSP on the RF plus
| regular CPU on computing the location from the demo
| demodulated signals. 32-bit CPU.
| e44858 wrote:
| You also have an LTE modem transmitting the GPS coordinates
| to the cell tower.
| gitgud wrote:
| > Months of battery life with gps is impossible.
|
| Apple air tags last for 12 months apparently
|
| https://www.tile.com/en-au/blog/airtag-battery-life#
| wccrawford wrote:
| They aren't GPS. They rely on a proprietary network of
| devices from one of the biggest tech giants in the world.
| rplnt wrote:
| That's why Apple makes it so damn hard (compared to any
| Android I've ever owned) to turn off Location, Bluetooth
| (and maybe WiFi) on their mobile devices.
| binarymax wrote:
| Disabling location is annoying yes (a couple levels deep
| in the settings) - but disabling bluetooth and wifi is at
| the top level and very easy to do.
| rodorgas wrote:
| Since iOS 11, turning Bluetooth off from the control
| center only puts Bluetooth on a timeout until the next
| morning instead of disabling it permanently, as one would
| expect. Even when it's off, the antenna stays on, looking
| for new devices. You can turn it all the way off by
| digging into the settings menu, but as soon as you turn
| it on for any reason, the cycle starts again.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| I personally really like this, because 95% of the time
| when I turn off my Bluetooth what I'm really wanting to
| do is put it on pause. The times when I want to turn it
| off completely, I also want to turn off everything else
| (Wi-Fi etc.) so airplane mode (which does not time out)
| works great.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Similar to what rodorgas said about bluetooth, when you
| disable WiFi it's normally "stop connecting to
| (currently) nearby wifi until tomorrow". The radio
| doesn't turn off and it still actively scans for other
| wifi to connect to (will connect 5min later at your
| friend's house, for example).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| It is not impossible if the GPS is off by default. Battery life
| is 20 hours only in "lost mode", aka when the location is being
| updated every 30 seconds. If you don't need that, and are okay
| with updates on demand, it can last a year.
| demondemidi wrote:
| Obviously.
| 0xFF0123 wrote:
| This was unnecessarily snarky in an otherwise insightful
| discussion.
| wussboy wrote:
| It wasn't obvious to me.
| lagolinguini wrote:
| My cat was missing for a few days about a month ago. It was
| really stressful. Currently, I've put an AirTag on her which
| works okay since she's an outdoor cat but I still get paranoid
| when FindMy hasn't updated in a while. I would really love to
| support this project!
| aivisol wrote:
| Our cat once disappeared for a week and we still have no idea
| where he has been. We have already said good bye since we
| presumed it got caught by a fox or some other predator.
| Returned exactly 7 days later as nothing happened, in good
| shape, not particularly hungry, nor dirty. Go figure!
| elzbardico wrote:
| Some cats have multiple houses. Lots of people love cats, and
| if a cat starts frequenting their houses, they will start
| feeding them and kind of adopting them. Cat lives in the new
| house for a few days, then go back to original house, stay
| for a while, and go to the second house, and so on.
| aivisol wrote:
| We considered this option, and since we live in a remote
| countryside, we actually asked the neighbors around in few
| km radius. None knew anything. Mystery still unsolved.
| Happened only once.
| c_o_n_v_e_x wrote:
| I was a product manager for a personnel tracking solution that
| relied on a bluetooth-like technology.
|
| I don't remember how it started exactly, but given the number of
| cat owners on the team, I started joking that I wanted to
| repurpose our tech and start a cat tracking app called
| "locatify."
|
| Not only has the name locatify since been taken, I keep seeing
| references to cat tracking solutions everywhere!
| jstarfish wrote:
| I once created a spiked floormat intended for feline area
| denial.
|
| I wanted to call it Pussy Control but my wife wouldn't let me.
| leros wrote:
| 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.
| lozenge wrote:
| 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.
| lxe wrote:
| > 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.
| foobarqux wrote:
| One imperfect option is the Mictrack MT710
| 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.
| gwoplock wrote:
| 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.
| skratlo wrote:
| No Android app, no cigar
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