Pet-nology: Three pet tracking gadgets
There are some huge similarities between gadgets and pets – people become excited when they get a new one, they are both well looked after, and when they go wrong, they cost a lot of money to fix. One key difference, however, is lifespan. Gadgets have a turnover of a few years, while pets will hopefully last at least a decade.
Which is why when you lose a gadget you don’t go around the neighbourhood calling its name, putting up posters and reporting it missing to the Royal Society of Protection Against Cruelty to Gadgets. You just buy a new one. This option isn’t available for pets – getting an animal with the exact same feature-set as your last one is highly infeasible.
Instead, we usually want our old one back – and that is where these three pet-tracking gadgets come in, offering three different-but-useful ways of retrieving your missing pet.
Loc8tor
Much like the typical “bug” found in olden-days spy films, the Loc8tor is a tiny tag (just a little bigger than a pound coin) that attaches to your pet’s collar and allows you to track it to a maximum range of 122m.
Once attached, let your animal wonder wild while you follow behind with your Loc8tor handset, which uses a series of increasing beeps to alert you to the tag’s proximity, and indicates the direction of the tag with lights. It’s like hotter or colder, but without the possibility of someone leading you into a bed of stinging nettles.
The tag itself is a mere 6 grams, so perfect for an animal of any size, and comes in a splash-prove case, although the use of the device on any type of fish is strongly not recommended.
CatTrack
CatTrack is the prevention to the Loc8tor’s cure. The device itself is basically a GPS receiver that records where your cat has been. You then remove the gadget from the animal and plug into your computer. This way, you can learn where your cat likes to hang out (it is always nice to know more about the people you love).
It also means you can scald it for cheating on you with the neighbours, who have a warmer house and more expensive food.
Just like the Loc8tor, the device can fit to a pet’s collar (although it is a little cumbersome) and is waterproof (although still not recommended for fish).
CatTraQ Live
The ultimate tracking tool – if you were hunting down an animal on the run, this is what you’d want it to be wearing. The gadget, which is quite large (around the size of four two pound coins placed edge to edge), has a built-in GPS receiver and sim-card slot.
Simply pop in a normal sim-card (with credit) and when you call the number, it will text back with the GPS co-ordinates of the device. Then put the co-ordinates into the CatTraQ Live map software, or even Google Maps, and you can see exactly where your animal has escaped to.
Sure, such technology would have made the movie Homeward Bound far less exciting, but at least you can chose five different colours for the reusable splash-proof jacket.
