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by ntaylor 4321 days ago
It seems to me that this software would be infinitely more useful if there was some kind of always-on base station which reports over wifi. That would enable pet owners to keep an eye on their pets even when they're not at home.

Ultimately, if your pet does manage to escape the range of your phone (or base station), there's nothing that this app can do to help you locate them. Do you have any plans to expand the app to support crowd sourced recovery like Tile (http://www.thetileapp.com/)?

1 comments

We do have a base station coming out in the next few months! It is called "Play-tag: home base"

We were thinking about crowd sourcing, but still on the fence. What's your thought on it?

The marketing seemed to be centered around reducing the risk of a lost pet. If this is truly the goal, having a crowd sourced mesh network for recovering a lost pet seems like an ideal feature.
The cool thing about this too is the user (dog owner) can set a reward for the finder, with this non-dog owners will get on board with the app too!
There are too many hoops to jump through. The person who finds the dogs needs an iPhone. They then need to be able to figure out that the tag requires an app. They then download an app to receive a notification from the tag. Then you somehow figure out that the dog is lost and display reward information. You reunite dog with owner. The non-dog owner somehow keeps the app around for the next time they find a dog?

Alternatively, you can just write your phone number on a dog tag.

Additionally, I don't see anything on the tag that explains to people that they should download an app for owner information.

Thanks for the feedback. There is also a code on the tag that you can text to get info about the dog and also texts the owner. We are still working out the bugs on this though... But maybe I should add to FAQ on website?