Smart dog collar

Internet of things is now! Smart wearables for have already penetrated our lives!

The project idea is to make a wearable that is able keep track of your dog’s activities throughout the day. Will monitor its moves around house and yard and give you a full report on what it is doing (and were) even if you are not at home! It will also inform you when the dog leaves your premises and keep track of its position. In order to achieve that advanced signal processing techniques will be used.

However, nobody wants to put a collar on their dog that they have to take it out and charge it every couple of days or week. Designing the system to consume as low power possible is not enough since battery will not last for ever. Also, operating a real time monitoring system demands high energy consumption, even if the circuit is optimal in energy efficiency.  At this point energy harvesting comes into the game! Motion and thermal generators can give some extra power to extend the battery life of the whole system but they are not sufficient to fully charge the battery so at some point the whole system will need charging.

While doing my research on how to charge the collar without the user need to move his finger I came across this contest and the wireless energy transfer. Then I realized that there is no need to charge the collar all time but when the dog goes for sleep on its bed or its favorite couch, or even when it is eating the dog can get its “free charging” through the wireless power transmitter and receiver. In addition to that, using multiple energy transmitters creating a beam-form could increase the charging range up to 10’s of centimeters.

Wearables and Internet of things are the future! Lets consider its power needs and set the foundations for a generation of wearables where charging is not something you have to worry about today!