Obsess over your dog even more with this smart pet door
People who want to know everything about their pets have a powerful new tool.
SureFlap, based in the UK, already makes a line of products connected to pets' implanted microchips. Now it's putting out an app-enabled pet door for cats and small dogs.
It should be pretty straightforward to start tracking your pet with the ultimate pet surveillance set-up, called the Microchip Pet Door Connect. You install the pet door just like any cat or small doggie door. You plug in the "hub" which connects the door to the internet. Then your cat comes slinking in from the garden and you get a notification on your smartphone.
Beyond letting you know when your pet comes and goes, the flap is smart enough to be set to lock or unlock, which you can control from the app. As the site a bit creepily suggests, "create a curfew" for your dog. Or "protect your home," since you can now block out neighborhood cats and strays from coming in. So much power.
Like company's already-available cat flap and pet feeder, this new product uses pets' microchips. But if they don't have one implanted, RFID collar tags work, too, and are conveniently sold by the British pet tech company.
It's coming out this summer for about $200, per the Verge, just in time for tracking Fido's every single move.
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
