I never worry about losing my phone anymore. If I have misplaced it, I hop on my computer and go to a website that will tell me exactly where my phone it. It’s effortless, and I find that the majority of the time it is exactly where I left it. When I lose my car in the parking lot, my phone tells me right where I parked, and gives me walking directions to it.
Cellular and GPS tracking has become so advanced that there’s no need to worry about losing these kinds of things anymore. That gives me more time to worry about things that don’t stay still when they get lost, like my dog. The guys at Qualcomm have come up with an inexpensive yet sophisticated method to track your dog if they ever get away from you.
The Qualcomm Tagg is, for all intents and purposes, a cell phone for your dog. The device clips into the collar mount, and lives on your pet. While it is attached to your pet, the Tagg base station will occasionally ping the collar to make sure all is well. If the collar responds within an acceptable time, everything is great. If, for whatever reason, Tagg does not respond within an acceptable amount of time, or the response identifies the pet as being outside of the perimeter you have defined, Tagg lets you know that something is wrong. From the Tagg app for iOS and Android, or from the Tagg website, you will be able to locate your pet, and even get directions to the last recorded location of the pet.
The Tagg system is really designed for larger pets, most commonly dogs that are above 10 lbs. The monitor isn’t much wider than your average collar, and snaps into place so your pet can’t pry it off. On either side of the plastic casing for Tagg are two flexible rubber tags. These tags have the antennae to the Verizon Wireless cellular and GPS radios inside, and feel quite durable. The casing is also water resistant, in case your pet likes to jump in the pool occasionally or play in puddles.
Just about once a month, Tagg will need to be taken off the pet and charged in the base station that comes with the kit. The more your pet spends outside the range of the base station, where it is using GPS more, the less battery life you will see out of the unit on a single charge.
When you set Tagg up in your house, you are given some basic control over the range of the Tagg base station. You can choose to let it stretch out as far as it will go, or you can isolate the base station to a specific room or building. If you live in an area where your pet likes to get out and mess around in the neighbors yard, you can limit the Tagg base station to just your house, and get an alert any time your pet leaves the premises.
The Tagg service works with all iOS and Android 2.2+ devices, but also via SMS on non-smartphone devices. Just send a text to a pre-determined number to check in on your pet. When you consider all of the technology inside the Tagg system, the $99 price tag is pretty small for that kind of piece of mind. Purchasing the Tagg isn’t all there is to it though, there’s also a $7.95 monthly fee for the cellular and GPS data that Tagg uses to communicate.
Tagg is currently available in the Apple Store, as well as on Tagg.com and Amazon.
