Consumer Products
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Embedded, Mobile
Dogtelligent
An Innovative End-To-End Connected Collar
Dogtelligent was a high-tech startup focused on connecting dog lovers with their favorite pets. Based in San Francisco, the company’s flagship product was an affordable, connected dog collar. In 2016, the founder of Dogtelligent, Patrick Perrine, relocated to West Michigan to be part of the Seamless Accelerator program, an IoT incubator based in Grand Rapids.
The Issue(s)
Challenge.
Dog owners love their pets, but they face a number of challenges:
- Training an animal is time-consuming, and obedience schools are expensive.
- Runaway pets are a huge concern for owners. Every year 10 million animals escape,
leaving their owners heartbroken. Traditional physical fences and shock-collar
solutions are expensive, and can’t help an owner if their best friend does run off. - Over 50% of dogs are overweight or obese, mostly because their owners are not
aware of how inactive their animals are.
Dogtelligent focused on solving all these problems for owners and improving the quality of life for dogs everywhere
The Solve
Solution.
SpinDance engineered and built an innovative end-to-end connected collar for Dogtelligent. The collar included cellular and Bluetooth connectivity, along with a number of sensors and feedback mechanisms. The smart collar connected to software running in the cloud, and, using a custom mobile app, afforded owners a new level of communication with their pets.
The solution delivered these unique features:
- An easy-to-use, self-guided training program built directly into the mobile app.
Designed by experts, this program removed the stress for both the owner and
the animal. - GPS-based features, including geofencing. The fence could be activated for any
number of locations, including a homeowner’s yard, or a local park. Once enabled,
the dog would receive human feedback via taptic feedback and auditory warnings. - Activity tracking and graphing tools. Owners could track their dog’s exercise, and get
notified if the dog was too sedentary. - The virtual leash, powered by BLE technology, enabled a user to take a walk and keep
the dog within a predefined distance… without a physical leash.
The collar was also designed to be the hub of a number of connected smart products, including
a connected dog bed and food tray.
The Success
Result.
Dogtelligent successfully graduated from the Seamless Accelerator program, and captured rave reviews. Patrick was thrilled with SpinDance’s contributions, saying “SpinDance’s expertise and thought leadership was a key driver for our team to execute 10x faster than it had previously, and deliver a seamlessly integrated digital interface and embedded system.”