I wanted to find a way to track where my cat is indoors, as I got tired of opening every cabinet to see if she got locked in again. GPS trackers are not quite useful for that, and are pretty expensive too. Generally €30+ for just the tracker. So I figured out a way to make it work instead: using a cheap bluetooth tracker with an airtag collar.
Total cost: €14,20. I’m not completely done with it yet, because I’m still missing two ESP32’s to scan for the tracker. But for now it reliably finds her and switches between indoors (ground floor) and outdoors.
It’s not elastic, but it does have a nice reflector band on it that reflects strong lights, like car head lights.
It’s kinda hard to measure while on the cat, but the pocket fits I think 3 cm tags. I’ll try to get a better measurement. The pocket is removable, there’s a small band at the back through which any collar would probably fit.
This is awesome. I was thinking of doing the same thing because I am deathly terrified my kitty escapes. Our dog loves her but doesn’t know how to show it and the neighbors have so many dogs that will rip her to shreds. I was thinking of an automated system to track where she is and close the doggy door if she comes close. And the airtag will help so much if somehow she does go missing.
The one I use is an iTag, which is only bluetooth, no GPS! But you can of course use a GPS tracker instead. That will show geolocation, but won’t show indoors location like my bluetooth one does.
I chose bluetooth because of the price and the ability to show indoors location. Also in my experience GPS quite often is not really precise, so it might show the cat outside when she isn’t.
I saw this post and I am also looking for a method to detect my cat. My cat is often outside and when she comes back, I wanted to detect her when she is in front of the door. Actually a motion sensor detacts the cat, but this does not work reliably, because other cats are also detected.
I have two doors and I think the only way is with bluetooth, because other technologies like NFC or the chip reader do only work with very short distances.
I have several shellies accross the house with bluetooth on board but all are implemented with a mqtt integration and bluetooth proxy cannot be used. I also do not know a small and cheap tracker that she can wear, maybe someone has an idea (the link to the cheap tracker above is not working anymore).
