My cats always seem to be enticed by random neighbours several streets away.
Previously using Loc8ers were ok, but too flimsy and died over a year or so.
With the ESP8266 mature enough now to work in low power, I hope to leverage its use.
Needs:
- Periodic SSID scan.
- Transmit ONLY when specific SSIDs found when: 1) Locating SSID found, 2) Home SSID and Battery low (MQTT/Email cat ID).
If battery life is better than expected:
- Multiple 'base' stations (likely ESP8266's) to track cat.
Possibly:
- I found the old Loc8ers collar 'beep' trained the cats (Pavlovian response) to come home, so use an 'initial' track SSID to cause collar to beep instead:
SSID examples: CatTrack-Beep, CatTrack-Find, CatTrack-State.
Safety:
- Test battery failure modes - a flaming battery strapped to a cat is a nightmare to behold, not only for the loss of my cat, but to the car/house/shed that it might be residing in at that time.