Nowadays, low prices for a GPS dog collar and the wide range of services included make the purchase of these devices very attractive. Their essential function has always been to locate your dog during outdoor activities or in general in all situations where there is a potential or current risk of losing sight of your dog or losing it.
There are very expensive devices that cost over 1000 euros and that are very popular in specific contexts where the dog moves away, even several metres, in non-urban environments, where it is not easy to have points of reference and it is therefore necessary to have direct communication between the device that transmits the signal and the device that receives it without having to rely on telephone companies or internet connection providers. The downside of these solutions, apart from the price, is the limited range of these devices, which can be less effective in other contexts. If the dog wanders too far away from home or is even stolen, the collar becomes completely useless once it is out of range.
GPS devices: how do they work
Losing a little in precision and stability of communication, it is possible to turn to devices capable of having complete GPS coverage, or rather global coverage (GPS stands for Global Positioning System), and which have an undoubted advantage for a GPS collar for dogs: competitive prices on the market, which fall well below 100 euros. This type of tracker does not use a palmtop, but our own smartphone: once the collar has calculated the position, it communicates it, together with all the other information it is able to collect, to a server via the GSM digital telephone line. At this point, all we need to do is use an app on our mobile phone or access a specific website from our PC to view our position and everything else.
For a collar with GPS for dogs, prices also depend on the amount of additional services offered. In addition to GPS, there may be other sensors and components capable of detecting a series of information that will be sent and processed by the software that interfaces with these devices in order to have a complete monitoring of the dog’s activities and in some cases even targeted suggestions for raising our four-legged friend in the best way possible.