Let’s look at the Meaowster-mind innovation packed into FindMyCat. Later in this post, I'll provide a more detailed breakdown of the engineering that powers the device.

1. Real GPS for outdoors

For your pets outdoor adventures, there is real GPS tracking powered by Nordic NRF9160, it operates over future proof LTE network so as long as there is a cellular network available, you will have visibility of your pets location.

2. Precise Find

Powered by Apple Nearby Interaction Framework, Bluetooth Low Energy and modern Ultrawideband technology, we have a precise find mode for when your pet decides it’s hide-and-seek time. Whether indoors or outdoors, you can use precise find to locate your pet to an accuracy of 10cm!

3. Smart Tether

For exceptional battery life and a very reliable geo-fence, we have the Smart Tether. When your pet is at home, a tether is created between the FindMyCat Tracker Device and the FindMyCat HomeStation (think of it as a virtual leash). 

This does two things, the Smart Tether instructs the GPS and LTE functionality to go to deep sleep, and send the location updates over your home wifi instead. When your pet leaves the home radius, the outdoor tracking peripherals are enabled, providing seamless transitions between indoors/outdoor location visibility and also a very reliable geo fencing solution.

4. Flexible tracking modes

a. Ping mode

When you want to know where they are, just hit “Ping” on the iOS app, and you’ll know their location within 40 seconds. 

b. Active Mode

If you care to record the history of where they have been, you can put the tracker in active mode. By default the device will report every 7 minutes until commanded to stop. 

c. Lost Mode

Hopefully you never have to use it, but when your pet seems lost, you can put the device in Lost mode and it will broadcast it’s location every 30 seconds until you have found your friend. 

Technical Overview

I’m constantly improving this project, which means that some of the documentation/instructions will evolve over time. Please find the latest extensively detailed engineering documentation at www.findmycat.io/docs

Hardware

The Hardware is built around NRF-9160 and DWM3001C. These two SOCs provide the location services for outdoors and indoors using the combination of GPS, LTE, Bluetooth Low Energy and Ultra-WideBand. 

The power delivery to the sub-systems and charging of the lithium-ion battery is managed by ADP-5360 PMIC.   

The HomeStation PCB [under development] is being built around NRF52833 and NRF7002. These are the BLE and Wifi SOCs that make the Smart Tether possible. 

Embedded Software

There are three parts to the embedded software. 

• Outdoor Location Engine
• Indoor Location Engine
• Home-Station

The following figure demonstrates the overview of how they play together in harmony.

There are two ways the FindMyCat device responds (reports location), one internally from the Tracker PCB (Responder) and externally from the HomeStation. The goal is to use these two responders in a way that minimizes the usage of the device's valuable resource, the Tracker Battery, while still ensuring visibility of the device's location.

Both HomeStation and Tracker PCB advertises BLE advertisement packets and scan for packets at different intervals to communicate visibility to each other.

The HomeStation advertises BLE ADV packets every second which the IndoorLocationEngine scans for every 30s. While the packets are visible the IndoorLocationEngine puts the NRF-9160 in deep sleep and HomeStation reports the location via WiFi.

The IndoorLocationEngine activates the OutdoorLocationEngine along with its periodic reporting or goes to ping mode depending on which is selected as default, when it doesn't see the HomeStation nearby.

iOS App

The FindMyCat iOS application is used to manage all your devices and...