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
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
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.
Where is the dog. (This is done by cell tower, or gps. But for this purpose, assume only the collar is informed.
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.
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/884670
Your comment was true, but not exactly relevant since we were talking about airtag-like devices that don’t have connectivity besides Bluetooth, saying that a device like them exists that has GPS built-in is kind of moot since they don’t have any additional ways to send that location info.
The thing you linked would fall under the walkie-talkie-like device I described.