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Mishiko Dog GPS & Fitness Tracker review

REVIEW – A few years ago I went to take our Yorkshire Terrier outside one last time before going to bed.  I was tired and feeling a bit lazy, so I didn’t bother putting a leash on her.  Normally our dog isn’t a runaway kind of dog, but that night there was a deer in the front yard.  Like a flash our dog went after it—yes, our little dog has a Napolean complex—and the deer took off.  She circled our house once and then bolted for the woods with our Yorkie in hot pursuit.  In less than 15 seconds from the time I had opened the front door, our dog was gone.  This story does have a happy ending.  After searching through the forest for 30 minutes, our daughter stumbled upon our dog and brought her home.  We were lucky that night, but maybe it’s better not to reply upon luck.  If you have a dog with a proclivity for running away or chasing the wildlife, Mishiko has a tracker that can help you find your missing canine companion.

What is it?

Mishiko Dog GPS & Fitness Tracker is a gadget designed for two purposes.  One, it can help you find your dog when she runs away; two, it can track your dog’s activity levels to make sure she’s getting enough exercise.

What’s in the box?

  • The tracker on a collar
  • A universal fastener
  • The charging station with USB cable
  • A quick start guide and a user manual with 2 pages of instructions in English

Hardware specs

Mishiko says that their tracker is designed for medium and large dogs and for good reason.  At 2 inches wide and 0.75 inches tall, the puck-shaped device is not exactly small.  When attached to the collar, it overwhelms our little Terrier but is perfect for our neighbor’s Golden Retriever.

The tracker is powered by a rechargeable battery.  The Mishiko website says that it takes about 3 hours to charge and should last for a day or two.  The battery can only be replaced by Mishiko service center specialists.

As its name implies, the Mishiko tracker has a GPS receiver that can collect geolocation and time information from both GPS and GLONASS satellites.  When used together, a GPS receiver can fix its position anywhere in the world to within 6 feet.  The Mishiko website, however, says their device, when conditions are good, is at best accurate up to 13 feet and at worst 164 feet.  One limitation for any GPS device is that it requires an unobstructed line of sight to the satellites.  If your dog is in a mountainous area or downtown among tall buildings, then the conditions could be poor and the GPS receiver might not work very well; in fact, the Mishiko website says that it could be off by as much as 3200 feet.  Just as a point of reference, a football field is only 360 feet long, if you include the end zones.

The tracker also contains a cellular device that communicates using 2G and 3G networks.  If you’re out in the boonies where there’s no cell phone coverage, then it won’t be able to transmit its location back to you.  This built-in cellular capability is what the Mishiko device uses to automatically check for and download software updates whenever it is charging.

The device is rated IP67, which means that it can be immersed in water up to 3 feet deep for up to 30 minutes.  In other words, it should be just fine if your dog jumps into the pool or the lake while wearing the tracker.

Installation and setup

The Mishiko Dog Tracker comes in a beautifully stylish little white box.

The top slides up and off, revealing a blue interior that highlights the tracker already attacked to a collar.  My tracker and collar were both white; they are also available in black.

The battery in the tracker does not come pre-charged, so the first thing to do is to set up the wireless charging station.  It comes with a USB cable for charging, which I plugged into my Anker USB charger.

As advertised, it took about 3 hours to charge.  The tracker has a built-in white light that goes all the way around its circumference.  When charging begins, only a small part of this ring is lit; when finished, the entire ring is lit.  As a side note, when fully charged this light is surprisingly bright; one night I woke up, saw the light from my bedroom, and thought I had left a lamp on.  It’s a bit much for around the house—we started calling our dog “Lightbulb” whenever she had the tracker on—but I suppose if your dog ran away at night, it could be very helpful for finding her.

The next step is to download the Mishiko app.  The quick start guide conveniently includes a couple of QR codes, one for Apple’s store and one for Google’s.  As I have an iPhone, I simply took a picture of the correct code, and it took me to the App Store for downloading.  So easy!

Once the app is downloaded, the registration process begins.  First, I created an account.  This requires an email for the username and a password of your choice.  Second, I entered some information about our dog, its breed, age, weight, height, gender, etc. and took her picture.  Although I am only tracking one dog, if you buy multiple trackers, you can track them all in the app with the same account.  Third, I entered the serial number and password associated with the device, which uniquely identifies it.  This info is helpfully found in the quick start guide, the user manual, and on the tracker itself.  Mishiko made sure that you won’t lose this info, without which the tracker isn’t of much use.  Registration was quick and painless!

Once the tracker finished charging, it was time to attach it to the dog.  If you want, you can use the collar that comes with the device.  It’s made of nylon and has plastic clips that are functional.  The collar is quite long (27 inches), and for anything smaller than a Saint Bernard you’ll probably want to trim off some of the excess.  Keep in mind that if you want to use Mishiko’s collar, you’ll need to take off every night or two in order to charge it.  On the other hand, if your dog already has a collar that you like, you can use the universal fastener to clip on the tracker.  I’m glad Mishiko added this little feature, because it makes it easy to take the device on and off.

Design and features

The Mishiko tracker has two main features:  keeping track of your dog and keeping her healthy.

Tracking your dog

If you have a dog that likes to run away, or if you have a new dog that you’re unsure about, the Mishiko tracker can be used to help you keep track of your dog’s location.

The first feature that the tracker offers is a geofence.  You find your house on the map and drop a geofence upon it.  The default shape is a square, but you can manipulate the four corners to make any four-sided shape that you want.

Whenever your dog leaves the geofence, the Mishiko app sends a notification warning you that your pet has breached the geofence.  The default size of the square is about 500 by 500 feet.  On our street, this square is large enough to cover not only our yard but five additional yards in both directions; in other words, it’s a huge geofence.  Shortly after setting up a default-sized geofence, I got an alert.  Our Yorkie had already run away!

Then I looked down and saw that she was sleeping on her bed right next to me.  Unfortunately, this was not the only false alarm that I got.  Every day I get a few more alerts, and every time the dog is right where she belongs.  This feature is a bit like the boy who cried wolf; it has happened so often that I simply ignore it.

To make matters worse, it’s just as error prone the other way around.  In other words, when I intentionally took the dog on a walk outside of the geofence, sometimes I got an alert, but other times I did not.  There seems to be about a 50-50 chance that the app will tell me that my dog has run away.  Sadly, I think the geofence feature is simply too unreliable to be of any use, which is too bad, because it’s a great idea.

The second feature that the tracker offers is the ability to find your dog once she runs away.  Since our dog doesn’t really run away—we couldn’t find a deer to help us out—we had to “help” her run away.  My wife put the dog in the car and drove off without telling me where in the neighborhood she was going.  I waited several minutes for the geofence alert to warn me, but sadly it never did.  Finally, I just turned the app on and looked at the map; indeed, my dog was no longer near our house.  I hopped into my car and set out to find her.  The good news is that this functioned exactly as intended.  Although the app doesn’t give directions like Google Maps—turn left on Main St—it perfectly overlaid both my position and the dog’s position on the map.  All I had to do was keep my icon moving towards my dog’s icon, and eventually, I found her.  Given Mishiko’s statements about how inaccurate the GPS might be, I was a bit concerned that the app would get me only sorta close to my dog but not really close.  I’m happy to report that this wasn’t the case; it was accurate to within a few feet.

After finding the dog in our neighborhood, my wife drove off again and took the dog out of our neighborhood.  I waited a bit and then tried to find her.  Even though she was a few miles away, the app had no problem leading me right to her, to the dog, and (conveniently) to a Starbucks.  This is really good to know:  If your dog runs away, the Mishiko tracker can take you right to her.

Keeping your dog healthy

The Mishiko tracker can be helpful if your dog runs away, but it’s also useful even if she never leaves your neighborhood.  It can track the health of your dog, ensure that she’s getting enough exercise, and give you some hints about diet.  It’s kind of like a Fitbit for dogs.

When I began using the app, one of the first things I did was run an assessment.  It’s a week-long evaluation of your dog and how much exercise she’s getting.  When finished, the app gives a diagnosis.  For my dog, the diagnosis was “Your dog has a normal body condition.”  Based on this diagnosis, the app helps you to keep your dog healthy in two ways.  It’s worth noting that the manual says the app works best for dogs that are one year or older, so if you have a puppy, it might be a bit off.

The first way the app keeps your dog healthy is by making sure that she gets enough exercise.  The tracker and the app measure how much exercise your dog has already had each day and how much more she needs to get (or stay) healthy.  You can press the “Start a walk” button, and it will track your path, the number of steps taken, the distance walked, and the total time of your walk.

In fact, this app keeps track of a lot of statistics about your dog, which you can find on the Statistics page.  It’s quite fabulous, except for one detail:  Its measurements are sometimes wildly inaccurate.  If you look at this next screenshot, you’ll see that it says that our dog walked 7.1 miles yesterday.  The problem?  Our dog never left the house that day, except when she had to “go” outside.  We didn’t take her for a walk that day; we didn’t even play fetch with her.  (We were pretty bad owners that day, weren’t we?)  Did she walk 7.1 miles?  Not a chance.  It’s unlikely she even walked half a mile.  There are lot of days when the statistics showed wonky values like this.

The second way the app keeps your dog healthy is by recommending good dog food to eat.  Some dog food is healthier than others, so if you enter the type of food that your dog is eating now, it can recommend better food.  Unfortunately, this part of the app looks like it’s not quite done.  It only recognizes a very limited set of manufacturers.  We use Hill’s Science Diet, a very popular brand and one recommended by our vet, yet the app didn’t recognize it and recommended that we switch.  Given the links to buying food from within the app, it feels more like a way for Mishiko to make a little extra money than it does a source of great recommendations.  On the other hand, there is some useful information here.  For example, it teaches you how to gradually change from an old dog food to a new one, something that is especially helpful for dogs with sensitive stomachs.

Overall the app looks nice; the interface is simple and intuitive.  There are, however, a few wrinkles that still need to be ironed out.  If you look back at the screenshot for the Statistics page above, you’ll see that “yesterday” is listed twice; every day is listed twice.  If you look at the monthly view below, you’ll see that it says February at the top, even though it’s actually March (and even says March on the bottom).  These aren’t critical bugs, but they seem like mistakes that should have already been caught by their software testing process.

What I like

  • Rechargeable battery and wireless charger
  • Uses GPS and cellular service, giving a broad range tracking
  • Rated IP67 for water protection
  • Great ability to find a runaway dog

What needs to be improved

  • False alarms for the geofence
  • Inaccurate calculation of our dog’s level of exercise
  • Small bugs in the software

Final thoughts

The Mishiko Pet Dog GPS Tracker leaves me conflicted.  On the one hand, I think the primary value of this device is to find your dog when she runs away, and it does this very well.  On the other hand, there are several things that just aren’t working right.  This gadget has a lot of potential, but for most people, I recommend waiting a bit to see Mishiko can fix the problems.  If, however, your dog likes to run away, and you’re concerned about losing her, then it’s probably worth buying.

Price:  The basic option is £49.99 (~$67) plus £4.49 (~$6) per month after the first month.  Other options are also available.
Where to buy:  Amazon UK
Source: The sample for this review was provided by Mishiko.

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Mishiko Dog GPS & Fitness Tracker review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 27, 2019 at 11:00 am.

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Woof – spritz! PetSafe training collars use safe spray for pooch behavior modification

NEWS – Constant barking is one thing that all new dog owners dread.  Stopping your pooch from waking you and the neighbors at all hours of the day or night is tough.  PetSafe has a solution with their new training collars.

There are two new models, a bark collar and a remote training collar.  Both fit pups eight pounds and up with up to a 27-inch neck. The collars are USB rechargeable and have a claimed 40-hour battery life.  They use either unscented or citronella scented recyclable refill cartridges, each good for 35 sprays.

The bark collar uses vibration and sound to determine your dog’s specific bark, eliminating false sprays from barks from other nearby dogs. Once your dog’s bark is detected, the collar emits a short burst of spray to discourage unwanted behavior.

The remote training collar has a digital remote trigger that works up to 300 yards away. It can be used for behavior training with three modes – tone, vibration, and spray. The remote is backlit so it can easily be used both day and night.

Both collars have LED status indicators – red for low battery and yellow for low spray. They are available directly from PetSafe now and will be available from pet supply retailers in April 2019. The Spray Bark Collar is $84.95 and the Remote Spray Trainer is $164.95.

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Woof – spritz! PetSafe training collars use safe spray for pooch behavior modification originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 19, 2019 at 12:30 pm.

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Wopet automatic pet feeder review

REVIEW – Wopet Automatic Pet Feeder for Cats and Dogs.

What is it?

The Wopet Feeder is a food dispenser for small animals, combining a digital clock and motorized drive system which releases dry food at up to four preset times daily.

What’s in the box?

  • Automatic Pet Feeder
  • Manual
  • USB adapter and cable
  • Small-size food distribution impeller

Hardware specs

  • Automatic Pet Feeder
  • Manual
  • USB adapter and cable
  • Small-size food distribution impeller

Design and features

The Wopet Automatic Pet Feeder is solidly constructed with excellent features. The food hopper is removable for easy cleaning. This is a vast improvement over previous pet feeders I have used.

There is a see-through plastic cover with a latching button, preventing messes should Mittens or Fido decide the feeder is being stingy. I deliberately knocked the feeder over to test the latch and not a single nugget of kibble was spilled.

Setup

After removing the feeder from the box, I opted to install the smaller food impeller. I have only one cat and wanted to give her smaller amounts of food more frequently to hopefully reduce the amount of kitty barf that ends up on my floors. Installation of the impeller took only a few minutes only requiring a Phillips-head screwdriver.

Next, I installed three D-Size batteries and started setting the clock and feeding schedule.  The batteries act as a backup if power is lost to the USB adapter.

Plugging the USB adapter in, was a little bit of a surprise – Don’t make any plans to use a mini or micro USB cable you have in your gadget drawer because the cable has USB A plugs on both ends.

Having the controls on the top of the housing is very convenient. I found the programming very intuitive. Individual buttons allow easy time, meal and size preferences.  I elected to feed my kitty small meals four times a day, as opposed to larger meals twice daily. After several weeks of feeding, this does appear to have reduced my cat’s gastrointestinal issues somewhat.

Performance

An odd feature is the voice recorder. After recording a short message, your custom voice is played for your furry friend each time food is dispensed, however, the volume is very low. I would think this was intended to garner your pet’s attention, but in my experience, just the sound of the feeder’s motor running is enough to get my cat galloping off in the direction of her victuals.

Every feeding reliably occurred as programmed and the quantity was virtually identical between feedings. This is especially important because my cat definitely lets me know if she feels cheated in any way, particularly at 3:00 am.

What I like

  • Removable food hopper
  • Easy programming
  • AC and battery powered
  • Flawless operation
  • Four customizable meal times and sizes daily

What needs to be improved

  • I would have preferred a micro USB receptacle on the housing for compatibility with commonly used cables
  • Voice recording volume is very low, but this is largely a gimmicky feature and does not affect the feeder’s great performance.
  • The feeding tray is not removable making cleaning less than optimal.

Final thoughts

The Wopet Automatic Pet Feeder is a vast improvement over other devices I have used and is of outstanding build quality and functionality. I and my beloved cat give it a wholehearted recommendation. Mini said, “meow,” but I think I translated her opinion properly!

Price: $89.95
Where to buy: Amazon
Source: The sample of this product was provided by Wopet.

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Wopet automatic pet feeder review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 14, 2019 at 11:00 am.

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The Wooly Snuffle Mat feeds your dog’s belly and brain

NEWS – In the past, I’ve written about my dog Zoey’s voracious appetite, and my search for ways slow her down during meal time. I recently wrote about the Rock ‘N Bowl dog feeder from Paw5. Now they’ve come up with another item that’s not a bowl but looks more like a shaggy mop than a dog feeder – the Wooly Snuffle Mat.

Here’s how it works. Just scatter the dog’s food directly on top of the shaggy mat then let them go to town. Snuffle Mat actually taps into your dog’s natural instinct to hunt and forage for food.   

Like the Rock ’N Bowl, it slows your dog down and makes the everyday routine of mealtime engaging and more fun. But with a softer approach.

It also works as a puzzler to help stimulate fido’s brain.

Snuffle Mat is made to be used with any dry dog food or treats.

It’s fully machine washable for easy cleaning between meals.

The Wooly Snuffle Mat comes in a modern gray color and is perfect for any size, breed, or age dog. You can buy one for your pooch from The Grommet for $39.95.

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The Wooly Snuffle Mat feeds your dog’s belly and brain originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 7, 2019 at 10:00 am.

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Pawscout Pet Tag review

REVIEW – My wife and I have a couple of cats and a couple of dogs. For years, we’ve been interested in some type of GPS or electronic tracking device for our dogs’ collar just in case they went AWOL or if we were at a large dog park and lost track of them somehow. I got the opportunity to do a test run with Pawscout: The Smarter Pet Tag which bills itself as a device to locate your pet, keep medical records and keep your pet safe with an active community & advanced technology.

Now, to preface, this is NOT a GPS device. It relies on Bluetooth connections to provide features for active tracking while with your pet. In the event of a lost pet emergency, there are tracking mechanisms in place however it is passive monitoring that requires other users in a network.

What is it?

Pawscout is a pet id tag for your dog or cat collar that connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth and a free downloadable app.

What’s in the box?

 

  • Pet ID Tag
  • 4 attachments to the tag to allow either hanging the tag from a collar or weaving the collar through to attach.
  • Two extra batteries
  • Instruction Manual
  • Optional – Pawscout included a custom engraved metal tag that inserts on the back of the device

Design and features

There isn’t much to control with the actual physical product on this device, as it is basically an idle token attached to your pet. Since all of the controls are within the app once you pair it with your phone, this review will have a large focus on the app and it’s mechanics and utility. I will note that within 24 hours of getting the unit in the mail, I got a notification that the battery needed to be replaced, which may be why they provided two extra batteries as there’s no telling how long the one included in the unit may have been in there before it was shipped to me. Installing the new battery was simple and the instructions indicate the battery should last approximately 6 months.

The app starts up by having you create a free account and input your pet’s basic details & a photo. You provide the breed or breeds, sex, size, weight, color(s) and date of birth. The instruction manual then gives you easy to follow instructions for pairing and I had no trouble doing so on my first attempt.

From the main map, you can zoom and scan the area around you, and as you do the app will give you a Safety Rating for the area currently in the field of view.

The more people who have the Pawscout app, the better chance that your pet would be found if it is reported lost. Thus, you can pick a dog park or walking route and then see if there are any areas where there may be problems if your dog gets off leach; or alternatively, areas where there are a lot of Pawscout users who can help locate your pet. The blue areas below show active areas of safety for the Pawscout tags.

From your pet’s main profile page, you can initiate additional features: Start Walk, Enable Leash, Add Pin and Report Lost.

 

The Start Walk allows you to track your walk route and adds an entry into your pet’s Walk Diary. As you can see from the walk diary entry below, the green marking indicates the recording of the walk by the app and id tag. However, the red line I’ve drawn in below shows the actual route we took. It isn’t very accurate and while it says we walked 3.512 miles, our route was nowhere near that long.

The Enable Leash is ideal for when you’re in a dog park or maybe an unfamiliar area. It is a virtual leash that will alert you once your pet has left the range shaded in orange.

Add Pin is one of the best features in my opinion, as you can set a Pin for others to see that mark either a Hazard, Dog Park or Pet Store. On the full map, as you zoom out from your current location, it will show these pins as well as other Pet Points of interests such as veterinarians, pet stores and parks.

And finally, the worst-case scenario, you can Report Lost. This feature will notify you when your pet passes within 300 feet of anyone who has the Pawscout app installed on his or her phone. The other users don’t necessarily have to have a Pawscout pet id, rather just as long as they have the app downloaded, they can help locate your pet passively. So, if you don’t mind your phone being used in this way, you can help your community of pet owners simply by downloading the app and allowing it to access your Bluetooth and location. The downside is that you will get notified any time a dog with a Petscout tag has been picked up by your phone, whether it’s been reported lost or not. You will have to option to contact/notify the owner or ignore the notification. So if you live in an area with a lot of users, it could become bothersome.

Additionally, from the “Community” tab in your homepage, you can see other Pets Near You – which gives you an idea of how many other Pawscout members are in your area.

What I like

  • Easy interface with app and features.
  • Informative map interface lets you find new places to go or a veterinarian in time of need.
  • Ability to mark hazards for other pet owners to see
  • The ability to be notified of the location where your lost pet would be
  • Notification when the battery is running low rather than just dying and having to figure out why it stopped working.

What needs to be improved

  • The tracking mechanism for dog walks – as it hasn’t come close to actual distance or route that was walked on any of our walks yet.
  • Lost pet notification only works within the app and is passively reliant on other users living in the area or people downloading the app out of kindness.
  • While there is a section in the pet profile for “Special Needs”, I could not find anywhere specific to add veterinarian records or vaccine information. A specific page or section in the profile for this data would be more helpful in case of an emergency.

Final thoughts

Overall, the Pawscout id tag does provide some positive utilities such as the ability to track walks, a network of other pet owners/animal lovers to help you locate your pet should it be lost, and an interactive map that allows you to communicate hazards with other pet owners in your area. However, I found that many of the features are redundant when you consider features already on your smartphone such as Yelp and Google Maps.

Also if your pet already has an id tag that has contact and address information or paying to have one engraved by Pawscout, a person finding a missing dog would actually have to take more time and effort trying to access the Pawscout information than if they just called the phone number on the tag. Additionally, the reliance on Bluetooth connection limits some functionality since you have to be in close proximity at all times, and it seems to have problems accurately accounting for the routes and distances on walks. Even with the network of users able to help with locating the pet should it be reported as lost, I’m just not sure what niche this product fits into. It’s not quite accurate enough for reliable walking data like a GPS tracker would be, while also not proactive enough on the “Lost pet” alert to be highly useful in helping locate a pet especially if you’re in a rural area with fewer people in the network.

Price: $19.95 for the tag – optional custom engraved nameplate $9.95.
Where to buy: Amazon
Source: The sample for this review was provided by Pawscout.

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Pawscout Pet Tag review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on March 6, 2019 at 1:07 pm.

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