Find Me By Pet Detectives

Have you or a loved one ever had a pet run away from home? This is a common issue most pet owners have, and locating your pet can be a difficult, time consuming task. This is the issue we, the Pet Detectives, are trying to solve with the FindMe pet tracker. Without a solution to this problem, such as FindMe, there is always a possibility that your pet may be lost forever. Although we cannot stop the problem at the root source, we can help you track down your pet once they have escaped, or allow you to check up on your pet’s location at any time. With a few clicks, you can log into your own personal profile and register up to three pets. Now, within seconds of noticing your pet is missing, you can locate where they are from our website with ease. Our tracker simply attaches directly to your pet’s existing collar or harness, requiring no additional accessories or purchases. With the help of FindMe, one of your greatest fears as a pet owner can be minimized. 

Unlike many other pet tracking devices that have a limited range and often require a base station, or a sperate handheld device, FindMe Pet Tracker uses GPS and LTE to send your pets location to a website accessible from anywhere. This gives you the peace of mind of allowing you to check up on your pet from anywhere, while at work, or on vacation across the world. You don’t have to worry about your pet running outside the range of a home base station, or about carrying around a proprietary handheld device. The website allows you to login on multiple devices, allowing your entire family to monitor your pet.

Utilizing LTE means our design can be effective almost anywhere, and modern LTE chips come in small packages, meaning the design has the potential to be downsized substantially.  This means a product with convenient functionality can be employed anywhere, and without the need for a lot of equipment for the customer.  Use our design requires only access to the internet, a SIM card, and our small device: the FindMe Pet Tracker.

Our design was first tested using development kits, this was to ensure that the components used were suitable for this purpose and provided the needed results. This allowed the development of software, both for the device as well as the website side to be done in tandem with our custom PCB. These development kits were used in testing the website, making sure location updates were made seamlessly and in real time. They also provided preliminary test results for the accuracy and speed of location updates. For the website, as well as back-end application, multiple devices were simulated to check proper operation. 

The Find Me is feasible in its current state as it effectively tracks the location of the dongle to within 3m and transmits the information to a fully functional and polished website. However, we are not satisfied with feasible, and we plan on making the Find Me a marketable product by reducing the size and cost of the second iteration, and by adding several new features such as: Support for more than three pets, the ability to create user defined geofences, and low battery notifications for the device.