Electric Dog Collar / Fence analysis
I'm looking at the near future here, looking for suggestions.
My 1st Garden Scarecrow platform is pretty close to being able to perform the way I had originally intended.
After my Crashing while Roaming situation is resolved, I need to be able to confine my Scarecrow to the
garden space on my property.
I'm thinking about looking into the signals of the Electric Dog Collars that are being used by
aparantly quite a few dog lovers to keep their dogs on their property.
I would think that many people doing robotic projects have thought about persuing this path.
This is what I'm thinking about.
Install the dog collar on my platform.
Look at existing signals given by the dog collar and attempt to interpret them so I can use them as a limit switch
to be able to steer the platform within the buried wire boundry.
The only thing I've been able to determine for now, is that the dog collars flash LED's, Deliver a shock or Beep in some
manner to deter the dog from leaving the area.
Any Suggestions concerning Brand Names, or anyone's attempts at doing something like this would greatly be appreciated.
Thanks
Garyg
My 1st Garden Scarecrow platform is pretty close to being able to perform the way I had originally intended.
After my Crashing while Roaming situation is resolved, I need to be able to confine my Scarecrow to the
garden space on my property.
I'm thinking about looking into the signals of the Electric Dog Collars that are being used by
aparantly quite a few dog lovers to keep their dogs on their property.
I would think that many people doing robotic projects have thought about persuing this path.
This is what I'm thinking about.
Install the dog collar on my platform.
Look at existing signals given by the dog collar and attempt to interpret them so I can use them as a limit switch
to be able to steer the platform within the buried wire boundry.
The only thing I've been able to determine for now, is that the dog collars flash LED's, Deliver a shock or Beep in some
manner to deter the dog from leaving the area.
Any Suggestions concerning Brand Names, or anyone's attempts at doing something like this would greatly be appreciated.
Thanks
Garyg
Comments
Uh oh. I meant to ask you in this other thread if this was for outdoors. http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php/145169-sharp-2yoa2-1?p=1158222&viewfull=1#post1158222
I'm sure those Sharp sensors are useless in bright sunlight. Better to use sonar (ultrasonic), but they are not weatherproof.
Thanks for the Heads up
When I move my Scarecrow project outside in the spring, I could maybe shield the Sharp sensors behind some kind of crash skirt.
Since I'm not using them in an analog fashion, a skirt may actually enhance the performance.
I'm also somewhat concerned about how my Ping sensor will behave in the weather.
These are things that will definitely need to be worked through.
While doing my indoor development, I noticed that my logic was not logical.
I wrote a super simple caliberation routine for my steering and crashing circuits.
I found out that in about 75% of my program routines, I had my left and right directions backwards.
It's hard for me to believe it took me 8 program revisions to discover this, But sometimes things happen.
At the minimum, the Sharp sensors will help me get my program logic corrected.
I usually develop things in a manner of build something and while building it, think about the next thing that will get in the way of success.
I think the Electric Dog Fence/collar may have some promise.
and as usual, I Try to keep things simple, no matter how complicated it gets.
It would be very interesting what you find out about using your dog fence.
Today, I talked to a person at the local pet store.
She appeared to know about these.
Most of them, only use an LED output to determine if the battery on the collar is low.
It appears that the Innotek SD-2000 beeps a tone when the dog is close to the boundary before starting the electrical discharge thing.
I did some checking on the internet, and it would appear that, for this particular model, the beep is a warning signal that lasts
about 10 seconds or so, then the beep stops.
The electrical discharge also operates for about 10 seconds and repeats about 6 times.
That's about all the information I could find today.
I might be able to decode the tone, but since information on this unit does not give any specification as to what it really does, I'm not
sure if I would be able to use the electric discharge information.
What I was really hoping for was an LED output on the collar that would flash as the dog was near the boundary.
So the search for information continues.