Does anyone selfhost a tracker for a dog or cat? A reputable company charges 5€-13€ per month for it. I’m not sure I want to pay that for more than 10 years
You can’t self host a tracker like that, at least not for free, because the only way for the data to be reported is through a cellular connection which costs money. The subscription fee seems perfectly reasonable
I don’t know the ins and outs of how they work, and I’m sure there’s some catch and they overall skeeve me out a bit, but I have seen a few companies that offer very limited free service, something like 25 mb/month. I don’t know how much data a gps tracker would use but that might be doable
I’m sure those companies do everything in their power to get you to pay more than nothing, automatically change your plan if you go over, deceptive emails, etc. so definitely something to be careful about. I also wouldn’t have a whole lot of confidence in those companies sticking around for very long.
And while not free, there are some pretty affordable prepaid plans and such that may be competitive or slightly cheaper than what a regular subscription might cost.
Depending on where you live, it may be possible to forego the call plan entirely, in a dense urban area with lots of open public WiFi networks, you may be able to work it entirely off of WiFi.
If you wanted to get real weird with it and jump through the loopholes to get licensed, there might also be some options using ham radio stuff like APRS, though that’s probably going to leave your dogs location exposed to any ham who happens to be playing with their radios in your area.
Now I’m not saying that any of that is necessarily a good idea or worth the hassle of setting any of that up, I’m just spitballing some ideas for what someone could potentially do if they did want to homebrew such a thing.
Not true. Free cellular connections exist in some places. And there are non-cellular solutions like LoRA trackers.
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Imo, such trackers aren’t useful for that. No other phone will report in which forest the dog is
In a forest, away from humans, under trees, you won’t have a signal to send SMSs or get a data connection either.
Some brands have gps as well.
GPS is one-way though, your device isn’t sending anything up to the satellites, it’s just looking for where they are.
You still need a way to get a signal from the collar to your phone or computer or whatever device you’re using to track it. Things like airtags and tiles use Bluetooth to talk to nearby phones that relay it onto the Internet. If no one is close enough with a phone they’re basically useless, and if the cell service is spotty, the location can’t be updated until the phone has a signal, and depending on the area, that could be a while which means your dog could be miles from where they were when a phone last picked up the signal from their collar.
If the collar itself is hooked up to the cell network, then you don’t have to rely on someone being nearby with a phone to pick up the location, but it is still reliant on having cell service, which may not be a given if you’re out hiking in the mountains for example.
Other than that, you would have to use other satellite services, or rely on having a direct radio connection to the collar, sort of like a walkie talkie except carrying the GPS data instead of voice.
My comment is true, and I’m aware how gps works. There’s 2 concepts here.
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Where is the dog. (This is done by cell tower, or gps. But for this purpose, assume only the collar is informed.
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Tell the owner where the dog is. (this is done by cell tower, or something like satellite messaging. NOT GPS)
You are correct that to collect the location data to your person you need connectivity and gps does not do that.
This is an example, which requires you get within 9 miles of the dog.
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Your cell coverage must really fucking bad for you to say that.
It’s not, it’s just that forests are really bad for phone signals. Trees disrupting the signal, valleys and sides of mountains with no direct view of antennas and just remoteness in general. I’ve been in a lot of forests with no cell reception, that’s why you always go with an offline map and tell someone where you are going.
It’s not a case that one of the leading phone company in the world has a satellite emergency mode.
It’s not, it’s just that forests are really bad for phone signals. Trees disrupting the signal, valleys and sides of mountains with no direct view of antennas and just remoteness in general. I’ve been in a lot of forests with no cell reception, that’s why you always go with an offline map and tell someone where you are going.
Yes but still I’ve had very good results even on 4G in large forest patches while hiking and whatnot.
Depending on where you are and where you hike, you may have a very different idea of what a large forest looks like than some people. Unless you’ve really traveled to go camping and hiking, or just happen to live in a very heavily forested area, what you think of as a large forest patch and what others think of may be in entirely different leagues. And just being in the woods is only part of the issue, geography has a bigger effect than all of the trees.
I’m from the Philly area, we have a pretty big wooded park, something like 2000 acres, that is entirely within the city. It’s also in a valley, so when you’re in the park there’s usually steep hills or even cliffs all around you. Cell service gets spotty in a lot of the park, even though there is probably no place in the park where you’re more than about a mile or so from major roads and cell towers and all the other stuff you expect to find in a major city, the signal just can’t get through all the dirt and rock surrounding you.
It gets even worse when you get up into the mountains, driving along a winding mountain road you can see your signal going bonkers bouncing between full bars and no bars based on what mountain is in the way of a tower at any given moment. And towers and everything else are just more spread out in general, one area I go pretty regularly to you’re often driving a good half hour or so between anything you’d really recognize as being a town, without much but woods and mountains in-between.
By contrast, I’ve also done some hiking in the NJ pine barrens, some of the sections I’ve been to absolutely dwarf that park in Philly I mentioned, and are generally more remote, but they’re mostly pretty flat, trees aren’t great for cell signals but they’re a hell of a lot better than mountains, so I can usually get pretty deep into the woods before my signal starts failing me.
I’ve also been to Quetico Provincial Park in Canada, which dwarfs pretty much any other forest I’ve personally ever been to, just an absolutely massive tract of natural area, and relatively flat at that, but it’s just so big and remote that there is really no cell service to speak of.
Have you ever been to the mountain west?
West of what?
Hell, just get west of the Mississippi - once you’re out of any town you’ll frequently lose cell connection.
It’s better along interstates, but still spotty.
No reason to spend money on towers in sparsely-populated areas.
Exactly right, anyone recommending those doesn’t understand how they work.
OR anyone suggesting those lives in a city and doesn’t generally let their pets out near forests and therefore didn’t think of that use case.
Seconded. And the more populated the area, the better the tracking is/will be.
You are basically paying them to have a sim card connected to cellular. It’s the same way with vehicle/trailer trackers.
There appear to be some on Ali express that you have to get your own cell service.
If you find anything let me know. I have a couple of dogs I would love to keep taps on, when they are out hunting. And I don’t have any iDevices, so AirTags are not useful for me.
https://www.findmycat.io (no personal experience, just aware of it)
That looks fantastic, if only the parts were available rather than needing to find a pcb manufacturer, 3d print the case, etc.
I don’t know any product that matches your requirements.
If I had to deal with that today I’d buy a rasberry pi, a USB sim card dongle and some raspberry hat with GPS receiver.
You can write a small API that listens to the raspberries, who sends periodically their positions, and save it to a database.
But it’s a quite large project. There’s a lot of aspects to consider. The GUI, security, batteries, and a way to attach it to an animal without being lost or destroyed.
Sorry for not giving a useful answer lol. If you come out with an actual solution I’ll be glad to hear it, so I can track my cats in case they get lost.
I’ve not thought of such a thing before. How does it work on a technical level? Can’t imagine a sim+gps being useful for long.
Why wouldn’t it be useful for long?
You have to charge it once in a while obviously
I imagine something that either reports the geo location each couple of minutes or once an hour would be sufficient I guess. On request could also be an option.
Connecting to GPS satellites uses a LOT of power. Most GPS units small enough to go on a collar will only last for a day or two without a charge. That’s why people are suggesting AirTags, because they don’t use GPS and the battery lasts for like…a year? But if you’re worried about your dog getting lost in the wilderness rather than near humans, then an AirTag won’t help much.
Connecting to GPS satellites uses a LOT of power. Most GPS units small enough to go on a collar will only last for a day or two without a charge.
You don’t connect to the GPS satellites. On “client side” GPS is passive. Periodically getting the GPS position and sending it via mobile data is actually quite “cheap” regarding battery. Good GPS tracking hardware can get up to 40-90 days availability without having to recharge.
Then please point me to all of the cheap, long lasting options that are small and light enough to clip to a dog’s collar and last for 40-90 days on a charge.
And there are cheap options on aliexpress that are solar powered
That’s not how GPS works.
It’s basically a radio signal your device listens for. Power consumption is tiny for that purpose. My smartwatch can go weeks with GPS active. Hell I have a 20 year old Garmin GPS for my motorcycle that will go several months on a couple AA batteries, and that tech is ancient by todays standards.
To be fair, GPS itself is ancient by today’s standards too. It has been operational for 30 years and first started development another 20 years before that.
Sort of. It is iterated upon and improved. The satellites up there now are quite advanced from the early ones, and another refresh is coming.
https://ts2.space/en/the-evolution-and-future-of-gps-satellite-technology/
No honey, that IS how GPS works. Triangulating your position via GPS requires connecting to no less than three satellites. Your smartwatch does not have GPS active 99% of the time. It’s getting location data by mostly by looking at cell towers and WiFi networks nearby, and only uses GPS very sparingly. If your GPS was constantly active (which is what you would want when trying to catch a lost dog) then your smartwatch battery would be dead within hours, not days.
Your Garmin runs on AA’s for weeks because it’s not TRACKING anything, it’s just showing your location on a map, locally. It’s ONLY using GPS and not using any sort of data connection. The energy required to constantly check GPS and constantly report back a device’s location via LTE is actually quite a lot, even if you only check in every five minutes. This is why GPS trackers only last a couple days unless they have a big battery. And this is why AirTags are popular; they last a long time because they don’t use GPS and they don’t need a data connection.
The fact that you keep saying “connect to GPS satellites” shows you don’t know what you’re talking about. There is no connection. And your response also has several other inaccuracies, but I’m going to end this conversation due to your aggressive tone.
Lol
We used this when we had cats: https://tabcat.com
It’s expensive up front but works pretty well and no hosting fees. Of course it’s not GPS so you kinda gotta know the general area the cat is in. But it was great for getting the cats in out of the yard. They would hide when it was time to come in until we got this. Worked ok for finding them in the neighborhood as well, just walked around pointing the remote everywhere. The collar tags are nice and small as well.
