The Dog Caller was created for the Toronto Humane Society and is intended to be sold to consumers in stores across North America in January. It’s a completely new piece of technology that we had to build from the ground up.

The Dog Caller uses the existing platform arduino. We are interfacing the arduino with a cell shield and integrating sensors into the code. The system transmits temperature data, but is built to allow more sensors. The data is transmitted as a data packet to the owner’s mobile phone. The mobile phone interprets that as an SMS message – alerting them when the Dog Caller is overheating.

The complexity of the technology really lies in the separate components, connection strings and communication protocol. However, the actual flow and overall function remains simple and intuitive: when the Dog Collar itself is exposed to a high or low temperature threshold, it triggers an SMS message to be sent to a mobile phone. There are common sense rules which can be altered to govern how many times in what time frame the messages should be sent out.

The technology stack is controlled on the microcontroller. It does all of the processing to determine when temperature thresholds are hit, either high or low. It sends out the appropriate message depending on which temperature threshold is hit.

The next step is to roll the Dog Caller out across North America. We’re in the process of crowd sourcing the funding through Ideacious – the Canadian equivalent to Kickstarter.

The full impact of the Dog Caller won’t occur until it hits stores across North America in January. We’re crowd sourcing the funding for the project through Ideacious – the Canadian equivalent to Kickstarter. But the immediate impact has been huge. News of the Dog Caller quickly became a trending topic on Twitter and other social media sites. It’s been featured on major news programs and shows around the world. It’s been written about on Mashable, on Discovery Channel, in PC World, and thousands of publications globally. Plus it’s already having an affect. After the idea was announced, not a single heat related animal death was reported.