this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
31 points (84.4% liked)

Selfhosted

40183 readers
535 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Does anyone selfhost a tracker for a dog or cat? A reputable company charges 5€-13€ per month for it. I'm not sure I want to pay that for more than 10 years

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

GPS is one-way though, your device isn't sending anything up to the satellites, it's just looking for where they are.

You still need a way to get a signal from the collar to your phone or computer or whatever device you're using to track it. Things like airtags and tiles use Bluetooth to talk to nearby phones that relay it onto the Internet. If no one is close enough with a phone they're basically useless, and if the cell service is spotty, the location can't be updated until the phone has a signal, and depending on the area, that could be a while which means your dog could be miles from where they were when a phone last picked up the signal from their collar.

If the collar itself is hooked up to the cell network, then you don't have to rely on someone being nearby with a phone to pick up the location, but it is still reliant on having cell service, which may not be a given if you're out hiking in the mountains for example.

Other than that, you would have to use other satellite services, or rely on having a direct radio connection to the collar, sort of like a walkie talkie except carrying the GPS data instead of voice.

[–] GBU_28@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My comment is true, and I'm aware how gps works. There's 2 concepts here.

  1. Where is the dog. (This is done by cell tower, or gps. But for this purpose, assume only the collar is informed.

  2. Tell the owner where the dog is. (this is done by cell tower, or something like satellite messaging. NOT GPS)

You are correct that to collect the location data to your person you need connectivity and gps does not do that.

This is an example, which requires you get within 9 miles of the dog.

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/884670

[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Your comment was true, but not exactly relevant since we were talking about airtag-like devices that don't have connectivity besides Bluetooth, saying that a device like them exists that has GPS built-in is kind of moot since they don't have any additional ways to send that location info.

The thing you linked would fall under the walkie-talkie-like device I described.