Again, thanks. Great point about the software (and it’s my own curiosity drawing me to deconstructing).
You’ve just made me realize I need to find a developer with experience in GPS / mobile devices. I worked with Nokia for many years (I work in strategy, and have zero hardware or software engineering skills). Your message reminded me of a conversation where they explained the battery life of each phone they launched was normally worst at launch, and then as they updated the software they would find efficiencies in the code that then improved battery life.
But yes, you are of course correct, the interesting bits will be hidden in the chip and/or code; way beyond my abilities - appreciate the nudge. Time to reach out to some contacts in that world.
If you just want to see whats inside and figure out whats going on, have at it, seriously. Thats why i take apart half the stuff i do, and i absolutely encourage that.
I’m amazed at the price of that Fi collar–it’s about $70 with a coupon. I have no idea how they’re keeping a company afloat with that product–I’d charge 10 times that. I guess they’re trying to make it up with the $300/year subscription. They’ve taken $10 million in VC cash which means they need a $100 million exit. I’d buy lots of those Fi collars now and make sure they work even if Fi pulls the plug.
Here are the issues you will have building a new collar:
GPS sucks. It requires special antennas with circular polarization and eats battery like no tomorrow. The best GPS systems use all the systems–GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and BeiDou–and couple it with cellular communication to cut down on battery consumption. It’s a lot of engineering and you will screw it up multiple times before getting it … barely okay. Better antenna equals more bulk.
That collar uses LTE-M … not straight LTE. That’s a special standard for automated system cellular backhaul. It has special antennas, bands, and modules. It has better battery life than a standard cellular phone and can reach quite a bit further than standard LTE if you crank the power and adjust the modulation. But, as you found out, LTE-M doesn’t work everywhere.
You need battery and software. Those are non-trivial engineering.
You need to go through FCC certification. $25K down the drain.
Hardware is easy relative to dealing with idiotic carriers (In this instance, AT&T and only AT&T because of LTE-M). You will feel like you are trapped in a Kafka novel trying to purchase, provision and manage the dumbass SIM cards for the system.
As someone who has designed systems like this before, you would need to be VERY clear what you were trying to do better than that Fi collar. Are you more interested in real-time tracking to share cool path pictures with other dog owners, or are you more interested in finding your dog when it goes AWOL in the middle of nowhere? These problems have very different solutions. The Fi collar is clearly more on the “social network sharing” side rather than “finding your dog” side.
If I were pricing it out as VP of Engineering, I would probably charge NRE (non-recurring expense/engineering) upfront of between $250K and $500K plus hourly labor charges ($250/hour for senior engineers–$125/hour for junior engineers) to implement something like this. If you or your club have a spare megabuck kicking around, feel free to give me a PM and I can put together the team to do this.
If you’re going to get somebody to take a crack at this for cheap, point them at the Nordic Semiconductor nrf9160. And then wish them good luck. They’ll need it.
Google “Marshall telemetry dog.” Marshall sells some telemetry stuff that might be useful or easier to replicate than GPS.
Not GPS, but possibly better for when there is no cell signal. The dog’s collar has a RF transmitter at a particular frequency. The owner has a receiver with a directional antenna (yagi). So you point the receiver around you until you find the strongest signal, go in that direction for a bit, then take another reading and eventually end up really close to the dog.
I hunted with birds of prey, and I had this sort of telemetry attached to them in case they decided to disappear. Long battery life. Accurate enough to get close enough to call them back if they are hungry.
I haven’t seen anything DIY that comes close to the commercial products available.
Have you taken a look at tracking devices for bicycles? As bikes get more expensive and a target for theft there are some examples that may fit what you are looking for.
