Your pet is an extension of yourself and part of the family and thus deserves the attention it wants. Luckily there is new pet tech that gives people the ability to communicate with there pet from anywhere in the world. Today Tech2U will go over the latest and greatest pet technology.
We must first ask ourselves whether or not a pet solution would even be worth it. Wouldn’t it just show my cat or dog sleeping around the house all day? Not really as our first product, Petcube, allows you to interact and play with your pet remotely. The Petcube connects to your WiFi and streams HD video to your computer or phone and even lets you control a laser pointer to exercise your pet. If you don’t have time in your busy schedule to play with your pet, you can set your Petcube to public and allow anyone on the internet to control the laser pointer and entertain your kitty. Petcube is a perfect indoor solution and will cost $199 at launch.
If your pet happens to be an outdoor pet, unfortunately Petcube won’t help. Fortunately there are other solutions, one being Whistle. Whistle is a collar and base station that tracks your pet’s whereabouts using GPS within the collar. You can set a safe zone and Whistle will send your smartphone an alert if they stray too far away from home. On top of tracking, Whistle will give you detailed health trends such as sleeping activity and medication tracking. Whistle is priced at $69.95.
If you are worried about your pet’s fitness you can now pick up a FitBark. FitBark attaches to your dogs collar and contains a waterproof sensor to gather data. FitBark will track your dog’s rest and activity time and even suggests exercise guidelines based on your pet’s breed, age, and activity. Social media is also integrated into the app allowing you to network with other friends and even see how your pet ranks health wise against them. FitBark is priced at $70.
The final product we will cover today is the Clever Pet. Clever Pet is designed to be a learning and entertainment tool for dogs. There is a touchpad with three buttons that light up in a pattern and the dog must match that pattern. It is similar to a “My Simon” game that rewards your pet with treats. Clever Pet contains other games such as “Catch the Squirrel” where your dog has to catch a fast moving light. Clever Pet also is designed to train your dog and can do word association exercises. The station might say “touch left” and if the dog presses the left button, they will get a treat. Pet owners can even record their own voices into the device to comfort them and help with the training process. Clever Pet is more expensive than the rest at an expected $299 release price.
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Video Transcription:
Host: Fido stop it. Don’t bite my shoe. Fido stop it.
If we could talk to our animals via TV or otherwise, we would say things like that. Because when they’re at home, they do things that we don’t like. We’ve got Ryan Eldridge, our tech guru with Tech 2 U, to let us know how we can stay connected to our dog via latest tech gadgets.
Ryan: Dog or cat. Here is kind of a cool thing. This is called the Petcube.
Host: Okay.
Ryan: This is a camera that you can have two-way conversations with your pet while they are at home.
You can also play a laser pointer with them. What you do is there is a little laser pointer on the front. You mount this kind of high up in the room and you can talk to your pet, see what they are doing all day, watch them as they are walking around, and then also play with them with the laser pointer. Or you can also if you’re kind of weird, you can…
Host: That’s me.
Ryan: …check out other people’s pets. So there is an app that you can get for your phone and you can literally play with a laser pointer with other people’s pets when you set this to public, other people can play with your pets online.
Host: Wow.
Ryan: This is a shelter that I’ve got right here, and so you can play a laser pointer with other cats in the shelter.
Host: I’m all about that because I’m one of those people that goes to the dog park. I don’t have a dog, but I go there because I like dogs. I’m sitting there on the bench petting other people’s dogs and they say, “Where’s your dog?” “I don’t have one.” “You’re a creepy guy.”
Ryan: This is pretty cool, though. It’s sixty bucks, or no I’m sorry, $200, and you can get it at petcube.com. It works awesome.
This is super cool, though. Imagine if you’ve got a dog that runs away a lot or that gets out of the yard and disappears, this is a GPS tracker for your dog. This is $60. It’s also $10 a month. It’s got a little GPS chip in it. It will track your dog wherever they go. You can set up certain zones and when that dog leaves that zone, it will send you an alert on your phone and say, “Hey, your dog has escaped, run and go get him.”
Host: There should be no lost pets with today’s technology.
Ryan: The interesting…there is a story on the site where the guy who created this, his dog ran away and he lost him for a year. When he got him back, he created this cool thing. It’s just a GPS chip, so it tracks it nationally. He can find out where the dog is, he can track it on a map and all kinds of cool stuff.
Host: There spares a lot of heartache for dog and cat owners who loose their pet. FitBark? Is this like Fitbit?
Ryan: That’s exactly it. It’s a Fitbit for your dog or your cat. You put it on them and what it does is it gives you certain, like it tracks their sleeping patterns, it tracks their exercise. It gives you suggestions based on breed and weight. How much exercise they should be getting? If you’ve got a Labrador and he’s sleeping all day, you might be like, “Oh, that’s fine.” But if you’d compare it to others, you can say, “Oh, my dog is in the 75 percentile of Labradors, maybe he needs to get some more exercise,” or something like that.
Host: Genius. How much is this?
Ryan: This one is…hold on. Sorry. That one is seventy bucks.
Host: Seventy bucks?
Ryan: But the cool thing is that there is no monthly fee on this, and it also has a GPS tracker on it.
Host: Ryan Eldridge, thank you so much for coming in. We appreciate your advice. We’ve got a lot more, I’ll be right back after the break.
Host: Okay. We are going to wrap up with Ryan Eldridge from Tech 2 U because you have one more thing that you wanted to mention. It’s called My Simon, a game for dogs.
Ryan: It’s called Clever Pet, and it’s kind of like My Simon for dogs. What it does is it basically got three little pads right next to their food bowl, and it will light up in different patterns. The dog gets to learn the patterns and tap the little thing. But you can teach it things like left and right, so it will say like touch left, and if the dog touches left, it will push him a little treat. Or you can record your own voice and you can say different things to your dog, and have them do different games. If you have a really high anxiety dog, this works really well. Anyway, it’s $299. It’s not launched yet but it should be out later this year. You can go to getcleverpet.com to check it out.
Host: Here’s my question. If you’re able to have a conversation with your pet, what would you say? Wouldn’t the dog kind of do this every time?
Ryan: There is another one that will take selfies of dogs. This is the weirdest thing. We didn’t get the chance to get the product in, but it’s another camera. Every time the dog comes up, it will take a selfie of them and then send them a little treat, and it sends you texts to your phone, and you can go, “Oh, look at my dog. It got another treat.”
