All the Ways Smart Technology Can Keep Your Pets From Escaping
When it comes to how smart technology can help manage your pets, you have options: there are smart feeders, smart pet cameras, and even smart pet tracking collars. I’m a little more hands-off with my dog in general, but I adopted a Doberman named Blueberry a few months ago, and despite the cozy offerings here, she’s started wandering around the neighborhood in the last few weeks. Since my yard was surrounded by a six-foot fence, I couldn’t figure out how she escaped: smart technology came to the rescue.
Wireless security cameras really do the heavy lifting here as they can be installed anywhere. I attached mine to a 4×4 post, leaned against the house and moved around as needed. There are only two exits to the courtyard, so I had to walk backwards. I placed cameras on the sides of the house to determine which side she was using. From there I moved the cameras to the side of the house that was being used. Using this method, I was able to guess that she was climbing over the fence, but I could not figure out how to do it. By moving the camera over the fence itself, I received a response in less than 24 hours.
During this time, when I knew my dog was going out, I set up a program using IFTTT so that every time the camera detected motion, the lights in my house would flash on and off. This would mean that I would have to go ahead and call her back immediately. Luckily, my dog didn’t show much interest in wandering and was just crawling along some chain link along the side of my house.
It took several days to remove that four-foot section of chain-link fence between my house and my neighbor’s and build an actual eight-foot fence that Blueberry couldn’t climb. In the meantime, I left alerts enabled for myself and used IFTTT to create some alerts for my dog. Namely, I used a vibration sensor from Aqara on the fence and added a smart siren . I enclosed both in a plastic container to keep them from getting wet and attached the containers to the top of the fence. I set up the automation so that every time the vibration sensor was triggered, the speaker would beep quickly and loudly. I kept the automation simple to keep it fast. The loud noise acted as a behavior correction device, causing Blueberry to fall off the fence. I set the automation to work only from 7:00 to 23:00 so as not to disturb the neighbors. At night, I would set the camera to shine a light on it if it detected movement.
Although I was able to solve this problem with some procedures and deductions, a reliable way to always know if your dog is leaving the yard is to use a smart tracker on his collar. Typically, the app will have logic built into it to set a geo-circle for your pet and alert you when it leaves it.