Think about you are on a hike in a distant mountain vary. Your hyperactive canine catches the scent of a deer and, powered by his hunter’s intuition, disappears within the forest. He has a GPS tracker in his collar that may ship his coordinates through the mobile community. However the place you’re, there is no such thing as a cellular protection. You retain whistling and calling however to no avail: your canine is nowhere to be seen.
That actual state of affairs prompted technologist Jonathan Bensamoun to develop what he describes because the world’s first satellite tv for pc-connected wearable machine for canines. Bensamoun is the founder and CEO of Fi, which has been manufacturing canine trackers since 2017. He first conceived the concept to make GPS gadgets for canines when he adopted a younger German shepherd named Thor and wished to guarantee that his employed canine walker wasn’t reducing corners when taking him out for walks.
However though the corporate had shortly grown right into a market chief, Bensamoun saved listening to clients complain concerning the machine’s usefulness. That is the place SpaceX’s Starlink satellites came in.
“The number one complaint from customers is either ‘I live in an area where the cellular network is not really good’ or ‘I get really worried about my dog when it’s away from the typical suburban area. I am worried when it escapes the yard and runs into the woods,” Bensamoun told Space.com.
When Starlink began delivering connectivity directly to smartphones in 2024, Bensamoun knew a solution to the problem was on its way. And on July 8, the world’s first satellite dog tracking service came online.
The device combines a GPS receiver, which determines the dog’s position in real time, and a simple battery-powered modem that connects to T-Mobile’s cellular network, which partners with Space’s Starlink system. When the dog’s position registers outside a pre-defined zone, the owner receives a message via a smartphone app.
When no cell tower is within reach, the device links with an overflying Starlink satellite to complete the task. The dog owner can also set a geo fence around the dog, an area within which the dog is allowed to move without triggering an alert. When the dog crosses that virtual boundary, for example, escapes from the backyard, the tracker sends a message to the owner.
The device’s battery lasts “multiple days”, according to Fi, giving the desperate pet owner plenty of time to locate the refugee. To speed up the search, Fi enables the owner to send the dog signals — short bursts of vibrations or sounds — to entice it to come home voluntarily.
“You can train your dog with those vibrations and reward it with food every time they receive the vibration,” said Bensamoun. “That way, they will start associating the vibration with their food being ready at home.”
GPS tracking has been around for decades. In the animal realm, wild, endangered animals became the first to wear them in the 1990s. But those early devices were clunky and expensive, good for large mammals such as moose and caribou, but not fit for commercial use on pets. The technology finally shrunk to small enough dimensions in the early 2010s when first GPS dog trackers entered the market.
Today, some 11 million dogs worldwide are tracked or monitored by GPS in some kind. Fi’s new tracker — the Fi Extremely Direct-to-Cell tracker — takes the expertise one other step additional by offering “practically omnipresent connectivity,” stated Bensamoun.
