Hacker News Reader

I care a fuck-ton more about finding my dog if lost than my bag. A bag can be replaced with an identical one. A dog cannot.

Current GPS collars are absolutely trash (3 day battery life, bulky, etc), this would be about 10,000 times better if effective. But if it starts beeping randomly unprompted and scares the dog, it's a problem.

View on HN

A GPS collar and this are two very very different things. An AirTag only works if an iPhone is nearby - if your dog is lost in the woods so to speak, an AirTag will not help you - a GPS collar will.

Sure but this is good enough to be useful in many situations, whereas a GPS collar is impractical enough that it's unlikely to be regularly used. I just wanna throw a chip on the 3 dogs collars and forget about it except to swap batteries once a year. I don't want to be bothered charging active GPS collars every few days and putting a heavy device for the dogs to carry.

I'm sure it's possible to get the best of both worlds, it's just that no one have made it yet. An active GPS tracker does not have to be larger than a keyfob to your car nor does it need to be online all the time. A combination where the GPS is only activated once the tag has not seen a known device for 1 hour. That should give you a battery life measured in years with meter precision when it matters.

Great idea.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com