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
Not self-hosted, but an AirTag on a collar would be much cheaper than that subscription fee. You can find collars specifically for holding AirTags.
Imo, such trackers aren’t useful for that. No other phone will report in which forest the dog is
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.
In a forest, away from humans, under trees, you won’t have a signal to send SMSs or get a data connection either.
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.
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.
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.
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.
