How to make a walkie-talkie for your dog?

Before Dug the Dog – the lovable talking dog from Disney’s 2009 blockbuster animation Upwards– there was Zoë, the police dog from Alsace. While Dug’s crazy blunders and brainwave-reading, voice-box collar endeared him to the audience, Zoe’s ability to follow her master’s orders from afar – performing tricks like climbing a ladder, turning it on and off from a tap and even removing her own collar – unacceptable. especially impressive because she was real.

Rewind to June 1939 then Popular science published a short story about Zoe, a dog whose Australian agent master strapped a shortwave radio to her back and taught her to follow his commands from a distance. Wireless dog technology has come a long way since 1939, including collars with everything from GPS trackers to biosensors, but if you want to talk to your dog through a collar – or, better yet, get your dog to talk to you through a collar – you you’ll have to build one yourself.

If the latter seems intimidating – building a device that reads your dog’s brain waves and speaks the resulting thoughts through a miniature collar speaker – it is. Even Elon Musk’s Neuralink hasn’t dabbled in dog mind reading and speech translator collars (not yet, at least). But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been done. Kind of.

In 2019, a group of engineering students at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, started an organization, Alma’s talking dogs, dedicated to improving “communication between dogs and people by using EEG technology, signal processing and machine learning to interpret dogs’ brain waves to better understand them and their behavior,” according to their website. In videos, Alma, their reluctant canine participant, seems less interested in a breakthrough in dog-human communication than in the tasty treat the students have to offer. Still, it’s an impressive device that the students strapped to Alma’s back and connected to her head to analyze canine brain activity at a rudimentary level. Who knows, with enough training data on dog behavior, artificial intelligence will one day actually give dogs a voice.

Of course, you could recreate it, like Disney did when they added a golden retriever in a 2016 promotional joke. With an external camera and speaker, Bob Peterson– the voice of animated Dug – provided the vocals as the real Dug wandered through a sunny park, surprising people with his biting and playful commentary.

There are options for pet owners who are serious about keeping an eye on their pets from a distance. Leveraging advances in biosensors, GPS tracking and machine learning, a slew of companies now offer smart collars with a variety of sensing features. PetPace, Whistle, Trekf, JiobitAnd Fi offer tracking using a combination of GPS and LTE-M, a low-power cellular network intended to support Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Of course, there’s the smart tag option, like Apple’s AirTagor similar devices from companies such as Tile. But air tags rely mainly on Bluetooth, which means their range is limited to the nearest signal. Bluetooth typically can’t transmit more than a maximum of about 200 feet (reliably closer to 30-50 feet), which won’t work if the real Dug gets lost in the woods. For the record, Apple does not recommend it using their pet AirTag.

[ Related: Dogs can understand more complex words than we thought ]

Fortunately, for pet owners who want to go beyond tracking or detection, saddlebag equipment is not necessary. But it takes a do-it-yourself style if you want to interact with your beloved dog when you’re away, or when he or she is in the care of a kennel. And you’ll probably want to use mobile technology, i.e. calling your furry friend, which of course means adding him or her to your family’s phone plan. There may also be other alternatives such as walkie-talkies with mobile functionality that use push-to-talk or PTT technology. But PTT can be a more challenging hack.

Auto-reply is key

Most smartwatches with cellular functionality offer an accessibility feature called auto-reply. For an Apple Watch this option can be found in Settings>Accessibility>Auto answer. The capability is aimed at watch users who may not be able to easily answer calls on their own. While Apple undoubtedly didn’t have pets in mind, there’s no reason why it wouldn’t work. Other smartwatches, such as the Samsung Galaxy, offer similar accessibility and auto-response features.

If you’re willing to incur the significant expense of getting your pet its own mobile watch and accompanying plan, here’s how to put together a collar that will let you talk to your dog – and get your dog to bark at you. Oh, and since it’s a smartwatch with all the bells and whistles, you should be able to use GPS to track and locate a lost device – er, dog. But don’t rely on the smartwatch’s biosensor features to track vital signs or activities, such as daily steps; all that fur will probably confuse the sensors, not to mention the difference in gait between a biped and a quadruped.

Suggested arrangement

For the smartwatch, choose a model such as the Apple Watch Series or Samsung Galaxy Watch; they must be equipped with mobile telephony. Don’t forget to activate the device on your telephone subscription. Look for a rugged case designed for watches, such as the Catalyst waterproof housing. It is ideal to use a watch case instead of a smart tag collar case as it is designed so that you can charge it without having to take the watch out of the case.

Attaching the watch to your pet’s collar can be as simple as putting it on, using the existing wristband, but it will be a bit cumbersome. Depending on the size of the watch case, it is possible to attach it to a smart tag holder that dangles from the collar. Either way, make sure it’s safe, especially if your dog is energetic. And make sure it’s placed so they can’t chew or swallow it. Don’t forget to enable and test auto-reply and GPS tracking.

Don’t forget the training

Just as Zoe, the police dog, had to be trained by her officer to respond to his remote voice commands, you will want to get your pet used to responding to your voice through a small speaker on the collar. It may seem strange, but regularly talking to your dog through the device while you are nearby probably helps. Be sure to reward your dog with treats and positive reinforcement when he responds appropriately. It may be worth consulting a professional dog trainer for tips, at least if he or she doesn’t hang up on you for tethering a cell phone to your furry friend in the first place.