(The following guideline helps to tell everyone what your project is)
Inspiration came from
Our own experience with our pets. It's a nightmare most dog owners likely will face someday: You look out outside and little Scooby is gone.
According to the National Council of Pet Population Study and Policy and the National Humane Society, a family pet is lost every two seconds. More than 10 million pets are lost annually, with only one in 10 family pets found.
"Found," though, may be misleading. They're almost all found by someone, whether it be strangers, animal control officers or law enforcement personnel. It's just that they never get home again.
What social problems do you solve?
Our collar and its device will track the pets that have gotten away from their owners, connecting people who have lost an animal with people who have found one, just by being an Apple user and with the use of Bluetooth. In addition, all the funds that we receive will be donated to the Animal Charities in HK after covering the costs of the products and designs. By using our collar, a person who has lost or found a pet will get a tracker location and an action plan to get the pet back. The pet's location is disseminated via Bluetooth using Air Tags.
How do we start from 0 to 1
We had to restart our project, the first idea we had was to build cardboard houses for pets and donate and sell them to the public, but our project encountered many difficulties and we had to change it to a different one but still with the same aim and target audience. In this case to help track lost pets using a special collar designed by us and compartment built via a 3D printer that will attach to the collar so we can store safely the Air Tag there.
The challenge we encountered
We encountered several challenges:
Restarted whole project
- AirTags are not pet trackers – although AirTags are used for tracking, they are meant for tracking objects.
- If you live in an area where there isn’t a lot of Apple users, you won’t be able to track your pet if it runs away, since there will be no devices nearby that can mark the location of your AirTag.
- Resistance limitations – although they are advertised as being splash, water, and dust resistant, AirTags do have their limitations.
- Pets can damage it – pet owners know how much they like to play around. cause them to malfunction.
- Pets can lose it – if your pet gets lost or runs away, and loses the AirTag, you will be able to locate the AirTag, but not the pet.
The resources we needed
- Air Tags to present the models.
- Cloth/plastic, paint/markers/ to make the collars
- Plastic compartment for Air Tag
- 3D Printer to design and create a plastic compartment for Air Tag
who are we
We are group 15 - Dog's Best Friend from St. Hilary's Primary School in Tai Po Campus.