High level overview #4
Description
Congrats on putting this amazing cat tracker together. It surely took some perseverance to make this a success!
I appreciate that you are sharing all the details necessary for people to build their own. I just wonder whether you could a more high level overview of the process and the technology used. Two reasons:
- process: I am not an engineer so reading the through all the documentation is already quite some work, so it would be good to have a high level under standing of what kind of effort (and resources) are needed to pull this off. Because if I lack certain resources, there is no point in reading the details. I understand that there are several options along the way (e.g. self-assembly or automatic manufacturing, so I would imagine a diagram showing the different path and the cost/resources associated with them.
- technology: I'm just curious about the technology involved. I think I am gathering that you're using GPS to determine the location and then cell-phone connection to send data home and UWB for indoors/ close range search, just like Apple FindMy, but I'm not sure I got it right. I'd also like to understand how you combined these to make the battery last so long (given that GPS and mobile-phone communication both use so much energy). Of course you can say: RTFM. It's probaly all in there. Fair enough. But - see above - it's difficult for a non-engineer to pull out the right bits of information and put them together.
BTW: I found FindMyCat because I googled "FindMy Cat", because I'm using an air tag on our cats and was wondering whether there is some open source solution that periodically checks the location of the air tag so that I can get an idea which area the cats are roaming.