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Comment by puttycat | Hacker News Reader

This is truly revolutionary for pet owners. All existing solutions I know of have at least one fault-intolerant property that makes them useless for the lost-pet use case (battery / size / unreliable connection coverage / etc.)

If I understand correctly Apple tags solve all of these at once.

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This isn't suitable for pets. The crowdsourced Bluetooth tracking will only really work for objects which will stay in one place when lost -- which pets are notorious for not doing.

For finding a lost pet, you really want something with cell reception and a GPS for real-time location. There's a number of products which specifically provide this, like the Whistle dog tag. Unfortunately, they're bulkier and require relatively frequent charging, but that's the price you pay for that functionality.

What, no. It literally shows the device on the map moving from ping to ping in san francisco on the airtags website.

What are the odds your pet will be within range of an iOS device?

Perhaps intermittently if in a busy urban environment, quickly heading to nil if in a more rural area.

Yeah I guess it’s time for dogs to have their own iPhones.

iDog?

The alternative is none, so I'd rather take the chance.

I used tractive. It is bulky and requires daily charging making it not so good for cats. I will likely play with Air Tag, as my cats usually travel in highly populated areas, so they should be seen by many people.

Would you like to hear the lecture about why cats should be kept indoors now? Or have you already heard and ignored it many times?

:-) I think the cats need the lecture more than I do. Seriously though, the scientific community seems to be split on the subject. Cats clearly prefer outside for approx. half of the time, the other half eating and sleeping at home. I own a house with huge garden, doors are open, cats are where they want to be.

Would you like to hear the reasons to let cats outside, or have you already heard and ignored them many times?

I'd actually like to hear one good reason, sure.

Giving them more activities to do and the greatly increased exercise are the two big ones. Even if you think it's better to keep a cat inside, there are strong reasons in either direction. People that let their cats outside aren't just being dumb.

I do this but I feel like Im keeping them from living life to the fullest. They’ll live more but at what cost?

in lost mode the tracking frequency goes to real time.

Unfortunately Whistle doesn't work in areas with poor coverage. And then there's the battery issues. A tag would at least be a good redundancy solution.

AirTags depends on other users with iOS devices to track devices out of range of your phone. If you're in an area with limited to no cell coverage, there probably aren't many people wandering around with iOS devices either -- especially not ones with cell connectivity to upload the locations where they spotted your tag.

That does get to an issue I was wondering about: how long does it remember and does it associate each ping with a geo tag?

We live the mountains with poor coverage and a dog who at one time was a wizard at escaping and getting lost.

Yet we do have people all around, so I think the iphone solution would work, even if it was delayed. At least I would have an idea of where to start searching. I bought every lower than professional level device and they all just didn't work here.

Whistle is pretty good tho and I have been really happy with the functionality for the price.

This was my first thought. Is there any downside to putting one on my dog?

No cell/GPS, so it won't track your dog if it gets lost in the forest or something. There are other (bulkier) trackers if you live in those sorts of areas, but otherwise I have a Tile on my dog's leash right now just to keep tabs on where she is when she's with a trusted caretaker like my parents. I'll probably switch it to an AirTag now because the network will have better coverage

As with many things in life though it would be better than nothing since there are scenarios when it will help you find your dog.

Yeah, a lot of people applying the Nirvana fallacy here.

"It won't work after 72 hours of losing your dog while doing a space expedition on Mars!"

> And even if users don’t have an iOS device, an AirTag separated from its owner for an extended period of time will play a sound when moved to draw attention to it.

I think there is no way to disable that feature, and that's by design.

Depends on how much distance is "separation" I guess, and how close you stick to your dog at all times, heh.

As repeatedly reported elsewhere in this thread, the current time for this back-up anti-stalking beeps is 3 days. (Updatable remotely by apple, but I doubt they will go below 24 hours). So as long as you come within Bluetooth range of your dog once every 3 days (or whatever apple changes it to), you will be fine.

This makes me wonder how long it takes for the iPhone based anti-stalking alerts to kick in. I'm sure this would be shorter, since it can be without too much annoyance. But how much shorter?

The anti anti stalking crowd will probably just jam a pin or pen into the speaker and permanently disable it,

The removable battery might be a problem if it's easily dislodged by scratching at a the collar.

The Whistle works quite well. And if your dog is somewhere where no other iPhone's are around, it'll still work.

Looked a bit big to me for a cat, but maybe it's lighter than it looks.

11g says the spec sheet, just shy of the weight of a AAA battery. Maybe too heavy for a small cat?

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