What about the dogs privacy ?
I'm not sure there is any animal less concerned with privacy than a dog :)
Fitbit for Dogs
21–30 of 132 posts
Re: Fitbit for Dogs
#22There is potential to save a ton of money in vet bills via early warning of potential disease in pets[1]. Activity and food intake information is enough for many. Adding some sort of food logging component could make it really powerful. I also wonder if the USP for the product should shift to the savings in vet bills or the extension of life.
[1] Obviously the response cannot be to go to the vet for each alert, but instead to take some action at home.
Re: Fitbit for Dogs
#23I wonder how dog would think about it?
Guaranteeing my labrador would find a way to get it off and eat it... total punk, that one
Re: Fitbit for Dogs
#24I follow activity monitors rather closely. The wifi connectivity is the most unusual part of this design.
There's never been a nice, simple way to setup wifi from a small device before.
The trick they are using here is to use the Bluetooth connection to setup the wifi. It's not a bad approach (in fact, they like it so much they're trying to patent it).
But TI recently came out with the CC3000, a wifi chip that can grab the setup information on its own (well, with the help of a smartphone app).
This avoids the hassles of managing two different 2.4GHz wireless systems on a small device.
I think that's where the future of wifi setup is heading.
Re: Fitbit for Dogs
#25"Whistle lets you know who's spending time with your dog while you're away, be it family or friends." How the hell does it do that? Before I saw the founders comment here on HN I thought this was an elaborate ruse because of this "feature."
Seconded. I thought it was a joke at first, making fun of the "It's X, but for dogs!" meme.
Definitely seems like this is solving a non-problem
Re: Fitbit for Dogs
#26The product looks amazing. Congrats to Ben, Steven, Nate, Kevin and the rest of the team working on this. Great job.
I hope you all like money.
Re: Fitbit for Dogs
#27Why no GPS integration? Would it affect the battery life to poorly?
I have a buddy that works at Garmin and from what I understand, GPS receivers are a huge battery drain and they are also pretty big/heavy in relation to other sensors. If you look at GPS running watches for instance, even the small ones are pretty beefy and they only last up to 8 hours while active.
Re: Fitbit for Dogs
#28Seems like a cool concept for owners that leave their dog at home during the day. Could finally figure out what those rascals are up to. Or if an uncommon spike of activity happens in the middle of the day, you may want to check in at home.
"Could finally figure out what those rascals are up to." I've checked with a webcam. Almost always sleeping.
We crate our lab mix during the work day -- he currently barks for about 2-3 minutes when we leave, chews on his toys (man he loves that kong full of peanut butter), falls asleep, wakes up for a few minutes, chews on his toys again, falls asleep; rinse and repeat.
I think we broke it down to like:
90% sleeping 5% chewing on stuff 5% sitting there doing nothing but awake
Re: Fitbit for Dogs
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Could finally figure out what those rascals are up to." I've checked with a webcam. Almost always sleeping.
We crate our lab mix during the work day -- he currently barks for about 2-3 minutes when we leave, chews on his toys (man he loves that kong full of peanut butter), falls asleep, wakes up for a few minutes, chews on his toys again, falls asleep; rinse and repeat. I think we broke it down to like: 90% sleeping 5% chewing on stuff 5% sitting there doing nothing but awake
Perhaps it's just because I grew up on a farm and our dogs roamed freely during the day, but this sounds like a miserable life for a dog. Is this a common thing for people to do?
Re: Fitbit for Dogs
#30I follow activity monitors rather closely. The wifi connectivity is the most unusual part of this design. There's never been a nice, simple way to setup wifi from a small device before. The trick they are using here is to use the Bluetooth connection to setup the wifi. It's not a bad approach (in fact, they like it so much they're trying to patent it). But TI recently came out with the CC3000, a wifi chip that can gr…
Withings have been using the dual Bluetooth/Wi-Fi approach for a while.