Originally Posted by
DaveLeeNC
I looked at the marketing material of one dog tracker and (pretty much like all of them) there is no really good technical description of what is going on. What is it that limits you to 10 miles? Are they actually emitting some kind of signal that you find directly somehow? In the 'normal' (as I expected it) implementation of read/interpret the GPS satellite data and talk to something via a cellular connection - just seems odd. 10 miles from where?
I don't know the details, but I assume it's a private radio network, and that's as far as the signal goes.
I've seen people hiking with these. A guy had a pack of basset hounds, he'd take them out to the woods, set them loose, they'd run around as much as their stubby little legs would let them, and then he'd find his exhausted, happy dogs. Garmin bought some kind of dog tracking system, and put functionality to use it into my watch. I have a cat, not a dog, so I would have preferred for their dev team to put better features into it, but I was curious and looked around when it happened.