Even the most watchful dog owners know that it only takes a second for Fido to escape into the big, wide world and once on the lam, it can be tough to track down a pooch with a nose for adventure. The Kyon GPS pet collar from an Athens, Greece,-based team not only tracks down your pet in terms of latitude and longitude, but also altitude to reveal which floor of a building it is located.
As well as pinpointing your pet's location using GPS and an inbuilt altimeter, the collar, working in conjunction with a home Wi-Fi basestation or companion smartphone app, also allows owners to set up a virtual geofence with a perimeter of 65 to 300 ft (20 to 90 m). If the pet leaves this predefined area, the app will immediately sound a notification. And thanks to an inbuilt GSM module, the collar can communicate with the basestation and app even when the dog wanders beyond Bluetooth range.
There are plenty of smart collars out there to keep tabs on your dog. The Tagg GPS Plus allows you to set up a geofence to alert you when your dog goes walkabout, while Whistle is a Fitbit style fitness tracker that measures your pooch's activity so they don't develop a paunch.
Where Kyon's feature set differs from these products is in the range of "dangers" it is designed to warn you about. Weighing in at just 60 g (2.15 oz), the collar also packs a 9-axis accelerometer, a heat sensor, an ultrasound buzzer and a water sensor. It also features an LED display to show contact information and help friendly strangers track a missing pet's owner down.
As well as using its temperature and water sensors to warn when your dog gets too hot, cold or is at a drowning risk, a built in accelerometer tracks your pet's activity over time and sounds an alert when the pet isn't behaving as it normally does, suggesting it may be feeling a bit off color.
Kyon is also designed to quiet barking dogs by emitting a 25-kHz, high-frequency noise inaudible to humans that's activated by pressing the Shh...! button in the smartphone app. The ultrasonic noise is also the basis for the collar's Pacify feature, which is claimed to stop your dog from fighting.
The team has already developed an app for iOS devices, with an Android version currently in the works.
Currently the Kyon crowdfunding project has raised over US$14,000 of its $75,000 goal, with $219 the minimum pledge for those looking to wrap one around their pet's neck. If everything goes as planned, the collar will be available in three different sizes and retail for $249, but users will also need to pay a $4.99 service fee to maintain the cellular network connection that enables people to find their dogs when they're out of basestation and phone Bluetooth range.
Kyon's video about the collar is below.
Source: Kyon