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How I taught my dog to text me selfies

twilio.com

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Re: How I taught my dog to text me selfies

#31

Post by sharkweek »

Used to train dogs at a local shelter in my free time. It was honestly one of the most fun parts of my week.

We used clicker training, and it always impressed me how even the oldest of dogs could learn new tricks (har har) if you found what motivated it, and then incentivized a specific action based on that motivation.

Even more fun was finding a really smart dog who you could teach to do the craziest stuff. Had one who probably learned 25ish tricks in his short time at the shelter. He was so motivated to learn. It was a pretty easy sell to the right adopter when you showed them you could point your finger at the dog, yell "HANDS UP" and he'd sit up with his paws in the air, you'd yell "BANG" and he'd fall over dead. How could you ever resist?

Example (not my video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lky1xsqYGUo

Re: How I taught my dog to text me selfies

#32

Post by jethro_tell »

gregorymichael wrote: post #7
jkot wrote: post #6

Nice, I guess author does not have a kids yet. It is fun to teach 1 year old howto use phone. edit: author has a kid, congrats

If you look closely in the background of that video, you'll see a Mamaroo. She's only four months, so for the time being the dog is way more trainable. Curious, have you read anything / have any concerns about introducing your kids to screens that early? I'm so afraid I'm rewiring her brain too young when I see her staring at my phone.

From what I've read, most known damaging screen time studies have been with non-interactive TV and extrapolated to other digital screens. I'm under the impression there will be more screen time for my kids than there was for me and I try to steer that towards problem solving and interaction, as opposed to consumption time. My daughter (3) loves to take pictures with my phones and tablets and crop, color, add the silly effects. Somehow ( and probably misguidedly) I view this as better than putting her in front of a movie.

In my view, it is probably more important to control the specific activities more than the blanket "screen time".

Re: How I taught my dog to text me selfies

#33

Post by cdcarter »

mattdotc wrote: post #18
gregorymichael wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was an awesome project using pretty much the same tech! For those who haven't seen it: http://makezine.com/2014/12/15/laundry-text-message-alerts-w...

That's a pretty decent idea for a project, but I would have instead hooked into the buzzer signal. The author over-complicated his solution, but that doesn't make it invalid.

My landlord wouldn't love me very much if I started taking apart my dryer to hook a mysterious wired object to the buzzer...

Re: How I taught my dog to text me selfies

#34

Post by sharkweek »

gregorymichael wrote: post #17
ChuckMcM wrote: post #15

I have discovered that my labrador would kill himself trying to figure out how to solve differential equations if he knew he could get a bite of ginger bread for it :-). That said, having raised a puppy that was destined for guide dog training, the trick is early on getting the dog to understand that you are asking it to do stuff. That is a big part of puppy training, and once trained, the dog will look for you to as…

I feel like my dog has way more potential than I have the ability to unlock. Any resources you'd recommend on training?

Chiming in - Karen Pryor's Clicker Training is really tough to beat: http://www.clickertraining.com/

Re: How I taught my dog to text me selfies

#35

Post by pacaro »

gregorymichael wrote: post #25
anon4 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parent has a point. If you can teach your dog that the button is a way to communicate with you when you're out of the house, that would be awesome. I suppose something like having a few signs it can hold when pressing the button, maybe? Training that would be incredibly hard, I'm guessing, but if possible, it would be amazing.

Great idea. My original plan envisioned something like: - I text into her number while out of the house - Twilio sends HTTP request to Arduino - Piezo buzzer sounds - Kaira has to hold the button for X seconds - Servo rotates auto treat dispenser In the end, simplicity won out. That said, those are far from insurmountable challenges.

A friend of mine (Hi Erick!) is working on http://puppod.com/

Re: How I taught my dog to text me selfies

#38

Post by whyaduck »

dreamweapon wrote: post #10

Is there any evidence the Dog is actually aware that he's "texting (or otherwise sending) a selfie" -- or even knows what a selfie is -- in any meaningful sense? "How I taught my dog to thwack his paw on a big red button in response to a keyword signal" might be a better title.

Is that your response when someone has their dog "play dead"?

"Does the dog understand what death is? Is the dog aware of it's own mortality?"

Re: How I taught my dog to text me selfies

#39

Post by astazangasta »

scuba7183 wrote: post #36
bglazer wrote: post #28

1. Train dog to press button 2. Train dog to press button when bell rings 3. Connect bell to the internet 4. SaaS dog selfies 5. Profit!

Actually not a bad idea. Set up a site and make it easy to donate $1 or some low amount

You guys should read about this artist's exhibit, where he has himself shot by a paintball gun hooked up to the Internet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafaa_Bilal

Don't do this to the poor dog.

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