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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

#51

Post by alexsb92 »

sharkweek wrote: post #31

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…

How would one train a dog to do something like the Hands Up routine? I've never had a dog, so I'm not sure how I'd get the whole motion across to the dog.

Re: How I taught my dog to text me selfies

#52

Post by mlmonkey »

hayksaakian wrote: post #50
notatoad wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, i love twilio, but its value is in integrating with legacy services or customers who are stuck on old technologies. Using it to build new services around SMS/MMS that don't need to be built on SMS seems a little backwards. "so we take this awesome system, it takes pictures that we upload it to dropbox, a perfectly acceptable destination for pictures. and then, for some strange reason, instead of sending an emai…

Both of you missed something big about SMS/MMS: It's not really a messaging system, it's a push notification system that everyone who has a smartphone is subscribed to. You probably have a phone that can accept MMS, and a corresponding phone number. Lets say I turn this into some kind of guard dog system (bear with me). Imagine someone wanders onto my property. I'd rather get a text/mms than an email which might get…

You misunderstood the GP. Instead of using Twilio, you can send an email directly to the phone number, and it works the same as SMS (more or less).

Re: How I taught my dog to text me selfies

#53

Post by thret »

alexsb92 wrote: post #51
sharkweek wrote: post #31

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…

How would one train a dog to do something like the Hands Up routine? I've never had a dog, so I'm not sure how I'd get the whole motion across to the dog.

I don't know the correct way, but for my dog it was a progression from sit -> shake hands -> give me ten. I would just move her into the position I wanted then give her praise and/or a treat. Repetition and praise.

Re: How I taught my dog to text me selfies

#55

Post by sharkweek »

alexsb92 wrote: post #51
sharkweek wrote: post #31

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…

How would one train a dog to do something like the Hands Up routine? I've never had a dog, so I'm not sure how I'd get the whole motion across to the dog.

You want to get the dog really comfortable with sit, stay and a "warm clicker" (Basically just get them used to the click noise = treat). Once they're good on those, have the dog sit as you hold the treat above them in a way that makes it so their nose is pointing straight up and they start to stretch their body to try and reach for the treat. Keep doing this until their paws start coming off the ground as they sit back on their hind legs. Click and treat repeatedly so they know this is what you want them to do.

Do this repetitiously until they start getting used to putting their paws up then start working on getting them to sit like that for a few seconds. As a reminder lots of clicks and treats to let them know they are doing what you want. At this point you can start introducing the voice commands.

After they have stay down, you can move into "bang" by once again holding a treat in a way that they fall to the ground, then immediately click and treat again repeatedly. Then you start working on getting them to roll over in the same motion. It's ok to sort of push them with your hands a bit to show them the physical motion you are looking for as long as you click and treat in little increments to show them that what they're doing is "good."

Probably too long winded, but if you look up "bang" dog tricks on YouTube there are a lot of handy guides. My final advice is to pay attention to how much fun you think your dog is having. Some love mental stimulation, others not as much. If the dog is losing interest, then it's probably time to call it quits for the day, as they'll stop thinking the training is fun.

Really, it's quite humorous how close human psychology is to that of my dog.

Re: How I taught my dog to text me selfies

#57

Post by joshjdr »

My wife doesn't have an HN account, but I showed her this article and here's her comment...

Great article! As a behavior analyst, let me name the research-supported behavioral interventions used here - stimulus control (pairing the word "light" with the behavior), most-to-least physical prompting (forcing the paw on the light), and differential reinforcement (reward for pressing the light; no reward for not pressing the light).

Re: How I taught my dog to text me selfies

#58

Post by joshjdr »

StavrosK wrote: post #48
sharkweek wrote: post #31

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…

I did the same for mine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COIVkkHxNR0 (this isn't the bang video, but she knows the commands for "what do you want?" "point" "go home", etc). I also taught her verbs and nouns, and could say "point ball" and she would point to her ball, or "fetch ball" and she would fetch it. Same with "bone", "rope" and a few more toys.

"clicker training" is also stimulus control. And, I would guess without know more about the actual procedure, differential reinforcement.

Re: How I taught my dog to text me selfies

#59

Post by ChuckMcM »

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!

And if you want to get some free press, have the button activate a "retweet" of what ever is currently at the top of the dog's twitter feed (have it follow a lot of celebrities)

Re: How I taught my dog to text me selfies

#60

Post by Theodores »

hayksaakian wrote: post #50
notatoad wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, i love twilio, but its value is in integrating with legacy services or customers who are stuck on old technologies. Using it to build new services around SMS/MMS that don't need to be built on SMS seems a little backwards. "so we take this awesome system, it takes pictures that we upload it to dropbox, a perfectly acceptable destination for pictures. and then, for some strange reason, instead of sending an emai…

Both of you missed something big about SMS/MMS: It's not really a messaging system, it's a push notification system that everyone who has a smartphone is subscribed to. You probably have a phone that can accept MMS, and a corresponding phone number. Lets say I turn this into some kind of guard dog system (bear with me). Imagine someone wanders onto my property. I'd rather get a text/mms than an email which might get…

> " I'd rather get a text/mms than an email which might get lost in my inbox."

That is what I thought. But actually, in practice, once one has moved from some old Nokia brick to a modern smartphone, the assumption is wrong. SMS has its place for sending someone a quick text but it is going the way of FAX, to be only used in some arcane circumstances.

With SMS the delivery was not as good as email. As mentioned, there is perfectly good wifi where I live but marginal phone signal. In theory I could find some remote mountain where there is only 2G but even then emails get delivered at least in header form.

The other thing is that when I had my SMS notifications I had to buy credits in advance. If the monitored sites were completely down and notifications were being sent to three people then those credits could run out quickly. So there was that unnecessary dependency on a third party service that had some credits to pay for in order for it to work. Totally non-strategic!

If we think of the dog and the selfies, say the dog just happens to tap the button every few seconds. That could be expensive with SMS but free on email.

You can also build some backup into the email approach, you can cc your private email as well as email your work one. There is none of the 140 character message length nonsense either.

Plus, who doesn't check their phone every 6 minutes or so?

To be slightly unfair, TFA is marketing spam. Even the box is over-engineered, you can get wifi PTZ cameras for small change on eBay and a few of them have an input for a switch so you can take 'selfies' with them, no wheel reinvention needed.

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