GPS/Tracking collar - Recommendations please!
Discussion
Can't help with a recommendation but I wouldn't recommend the one on this thread.
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...
I got the tracactive tracker for my dog. About the size of a box of matches (not the big boxes!!) it's a big dog so tracker size is not an issue. It clips onto his collar and is very secure.
Think it's about £60 - £70 for the year. Crap battery the more u check the location the shorter it lasts. Was having to charge it daily as I was checking it a lot. Now get 2-3 days from a charge.
Good and easy app to use. Very easy to see where the dog is and what he's up to. Only down side is no signal when he's in the trees / bushes it can lose signal. Maybe that would be a bigger down side on a cat.
Hth
Think it's about £60 - £70 for the year. Crap battery the more u check the location the shorter it lasts. Was having to charge it daily as I was checking it a lot. Now get 2-3 days from a charge.
Good and easy app to use. Very easy to see where the dog is and what he's up to. Only down side is no signal when he's in the trees / bushes it can lose signal. Maybe that would be a bigger down side on a cat.
Hth
I actually just bought a ‘Pawtrack’ a few days ago.
https://pawtrack.com/
It’s £60 a year for the tracking.
It’s a British product, British design, and it is absolutely f
king ste so far 
It arrived with a broken charger, and the collar seems poorly made.
The website interface and also the phone app is absolutely terrible and looks like it was designed and programmed by children, with numerous glitches and bugs present.
It seemed to work intermittently for a couple of days, but has now run out of battery as the charger is broken. So I can’t get any more testing done.
It comes with 2 batteries which you can swap easily.
To be fair, the guy who owns and runs the company responds really quickly to any issues or queries and is sending me a replacement unit right now.
The good news:
1) It is by far the best designed GPS collar I have seen. It is barely any heavier than a regular non-GPS cat collar. I kid you not. 28 grams I think it weighs.
2) Even the battery section is perfectly curved to fit around the cats neck, and the way it hangs is so that the battery slides to the bottom and the GPS/4G bit always sits on top for best signal.
3) The collar connects to wifi when the cat enters the house. This shuts down the 4G/GPS part and therefore saves the battery until the cat leaves the house again, which is really clever. The system informs you that cat is then at home.
4) Alerts pop up on your phone screen when the cat comes home, goes out, or stuff such as the battery in the collar is low.
5) The vendor tells me they are in the middle of totally redesigning the web interface and the app, so I hope that will solve a lot of the issues.
6) The collar has a beeper on it so if the cat does get lost, or if the collar gets lost from the cat, you can make your way to where the collar is showing on the map and then activate the beeper to locate the collar.
I’ll be genuinely upset if the replacement collar turns out to be crap as well, as I wanted this to be the solution, and like I said, it’s a far better design than all the others.
We will see.
https://pawtrack.com/
It’s £60 a year for the tracking.
It’s a British product, British design, and it is absolutely f
king ste so far It arrived with a broken charger, and the collar seems poorly made.
The website interface and also the phone app is absolutely terrible and looks like it was designed and programmed by children, with numerous glitches and bugs present.
It seemed to work intermittently for a couple of days, but has now run out of battery as the charger is broken. So I can’t get any more testing done.
It comes with 2 batteries which you can swap easily.
To be fair, the guy who owns and runs the company responds really quickly to any issues or queries and is sending me a replacement unit right now.
The good news:
1) It is by far the best designed GPS collar I have seen. It is barely any heavier than a regular non-GPS cat collar. I kid you not. 28 grams I think it weighs.
2) Even the battery section is perfectly curved to fit around the cats neck, and the way it hangs is so that the battery slides to the bottom and the GPS/4G bit always sits on top for best signal.
3) The collar connects to wifi when the cat enters the house. This shuts down the 4G/GPS part and therefore saves the battery until the cat leaves the house again, which is really clever. The system informs you that cat is then at home.
4) Alerts pop up on your phone screen when the cat comes home, goes out, or stuff such as the battery in the collar is low.
5) The vendor tells me they are in the middle of totally redesigning the web interface and the app, so I hope that will solve a lot of the issues.
6) The collar has a beeper on it so if the cat does get lost, or if the collar gets lost from the cat, you can make your way to where the collar is showing on the map and then activate the beeper to locate the collar.
I’ll be genuinely upset if the replacement collar turns out to be crap as well, as I wanted this to be the solution, and like I said, it’s a far better design than all the others.
We will see.
I put together a guide to cat and dog trackers on my blog - might be useful to see what's available. Cat and Dog Trackers
We've had the tabcat/loc8tor on ours for years now.
Basically its a cheap way in and works pretty well. It claims about 150m line of sight, and that's also its downfall as anything in the way reduces the range quite dramatically. But as you are carrying the handset and moving about you that line of sight varies quite quickly.
Batteries are cheap and easy to change. I much prefer the older oval transmitters to the new round ones. They are quite bit smaller to begin with and more rigid.
I dare say it has saved us from a number of long evenings searching when one doesn't come in but of course you don't know that when it only takes 5 mins. But the one time one cat did go (and went for 6 weeks) I couldn't pick her up anywhere despite hours (and hours) of searching yet when we did get her back it was all still working. I still can't work out how I couldn't pick her up at some point.
I wouldn't be without them now, I feel quite apprehensive if one slips out without their collar or I realise the battery isn't working
I like the idea of the first one in the above review with a 2 miles RF range.
Basically its a cheap way in and works pretty well. It claims about 150m line of sight, and that's also its downfall as anything in the way reduces the range quite dramatically. But as you are carrying the handset and moving about you that line of sight varies quite quickly.
Batteries are cheap and easy to change. I much prefer the older oval transmitters to the new round ones. They are quite bit smaller to begin with and more rigid.
I dare say it has saved us from a number of long evenings searching when one doesn't come in but of course you don't know that when it only takes 5 mins. But the one time one cat did go (and went for 6 weeks) I couldn't pick her up anywhere despite hours (and hours) of searching yet when we did get her back it was all still working. I still can't work out how I couldn't pick her up at some point.
I wouldn't be without them now, I feel quite apprehensive if one slips out without their collar or I realise the battery isn't working
I like the idea of the first one in the above review with a 2 miles RF range.
Gassing Station | All Creatures Great & Small | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff