Dog Tracker, with HE Integration, in UK?

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I've just moved my and my wife's presence detection over to OwnTracks from Life360 (this went smoothly, all credit to @lpakula!) and it's occurred to me that to finish the job I should really add something for our remaining family member, a large (as small dogs go) Cavalier King Charles Spaniel:

image

To this end, can anyone recommend a GPS-based tracking system that could be attached to his harness, and has Hubitat drivers available?

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My son’s dog tends to get loose. They attached an Apple AirTag to his collar.

Not integrated with HE, but it works (assuming you are on the dark side)

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Thanks for the suggestion!

As it turns out we're already on a different dark side; some years back we bought a Tile tracker that does a similar communal Bluetooth-based job to AirTags. Ironically their company was subsequently bought out by Life360, but even before Life360 nobbled API access to their phone-based tracking Tiles weren't integrated to a level where they could be accessed via that API.

The Tile can still be tracked via the Life360 phone app, but while I was on a roll with presence detection I thought I'd look into:

  • Switching into a more accurate GPS system.
  • Accessing that system from HE, so home/away rules could take into account the dog still being in even though both of his butlers are out.
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Life360 has a product called jiobit that offers GPS tracking for pets. I'm not sure if its a US only thing or if it works in the UK as well. It might be something to look into. As for integrating with HE, I haven't heard of anybody doing it.

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If you need to track a lost dog, IMO airtags are probably the best option given the ubiquity of apple devices. Still worth it even if you have to get an older iphone or ipad to use it with.

If you only need presence sensing (eg alert if the dog has gone outside a specific area then a BLE based beacon would work quite well (there is a project in the forums that does just this using a reaspberry pi and works with HE). I have a similar system based on ESP32s on Home Assistant.

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Thanks, but according to the FAQ this is currently US-only.

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Hmmmm, for the reason you give I can see airtags being better for communal Bluetooth-based tracking than Tiles, but surely a GPS-based system would be better than either?

With GPS you'll get a location to within a few metres, irrespective of whether any users of the system are in the locale. There are downsides with battery life, and likely the need for a mobile network subscription,, but as long as those are dealt with GPS seems pretty sound.

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AirTags are a decent option as long as your dog is never in a place without closeby iOS devices. If one lives in a rural place, or takes the dog hiking/camping etc., a GPS-based solution is essential. I agree that battery life is the major downside, though.

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Cheap android phone. That's how my old child tracker worked. With a sim from 1p mobile.

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You attach a phone to the dog?

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I attached a phone to a child's backpack.

This would work with a dog's harness.

Similar to my mental springer:

image

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Absolutely. Also these things cost substantially more than an airtag especially if you are looking at something low profile. However, as @marktheknife says , if you are not in an urban area airtags are much less useful or even not at all.

Although in a camping scenario I would imagine a lora based GPS tracker would be better.

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Thanks to all for responses - there've been a whole range of options presented, all with their own merits, although (given my "...and the moon on a plate, please" ideal spec) none an immediate winner for adoption.

In quick summary what we're after here is more a location tracking system than a presence sensor (HE-integrated sensing would be a welcome extra feature, but finding the dog if necessary is very much the primary objective). Some of the walkies we do are out in the relatively sparsely occupied countryside (Derbyshire, for those who know some English geography - far from wild in the US sense, but somewhere a decent network of mobile handsets can't be guaranteed), so something using GPS is needed for general reliability.

Using a cheap mobile for that hasn't been completely ruled out, but might be a bit more faff than we'd like - with a battery life of 1-2 days keeping it charged would be an ongoing effort, and a dedicated GPS dog tracker (charging every week or so) would be manageable financially.

For any future searchers' info I've been in touch with a few UK GPS tracker providers (Pawfit and PitPat) and confirmed they have no published API at present...there are more to try, though, and if I make any progress on this I'll follow up to this thread.

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For what it's worth, I used to use a phone and powerbank. Routine was to hang up the bag and plug it in.

Interested to hear the chosen solution in the end. :+1:

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Maybe not the Cheapest option but what about Tractive? https://tractive.com/
says it works in over 150 countries. No idea on the HE integration..

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Thanks - looks like the UK is one of those countries, although to my lack of surprise nothing's mentioned about published APIs on their website. I'll add them to my enquiry list...

Edit: Hmmm - nothing on their website, but... https://github.com/FAXES/tractive :thinking:

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We use Air Tag's on our dog's collars. Seems to work well.

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