Tractive GPS Dog Tracker and Home Assistant

A quick review of the Tractive GPS Tracker for Dogs and a very short tutorial on how to integrate it with Home Assistant. This is not a sponsored video... I selected and purchased this tracker myself. Full article here: www.speaktothegeek.co.uk/2022...
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[@AlfonsoRoa]

Im sure it can be done with something cheaper but one automation I have is to launch the robot vacuum when the home is alone. Sometimes we have a family dog at home and as many pets, he is not a friend of the vacuum, so we have a flag to mark we have pets at home. That makes us to mark it on and off if we take a walk and expect the vacuum to run. With something like this home assistant can keep track if the dog is still at home or not. As I say, we don't need really GPS tracking, but if you already have it as a nice way to solve it.

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Cool, that's quite a clever idea!

[@DerekWalker55]

This is not my idea, but an automation I have seen for this, would be an analysis of the dogs daily activity, that creates a calendar event / reminder for you to walk the dog, if their activity is below a certain threshold.

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

That might be fun to put together actually. Probably not really needed because there's no way Biscuit would let me forget to take her for a walk though!

[@talktosi]

I’m a long time Tractive user but a complete novice to Home Assistant. I found your video while looking for a way to use HA to warn me when the battery is below 20% so I can recharge it .. sometimes we forget to check the Tractive app and the battery dies while we’re out. A proactive alert to, say, email or an iOS notification would be very welcome

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

That’s a good idea, I’m going to set that one up myself. I’m always forgetting to charge it!

[@sharibrown3943]

I just bought this for my dog. I'm listening to your instructions. I did the fencing area and everything else. Than I took a walk with her off my property, which I live up a mountain I didn't hear any notifications coming from phone when we left the fence area. Should I see a light or a noise coming from it when she leaves the area?

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

The alerts would be on the phone but only if both the tracker and your phone have a working data connection. Mountains can be a bit tricky for phone signal at times especially near the bottom

[@michaelthompson657]

Could you not create the automation like you said, the geofence, but have it if your not in the same location as the dog?

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

I hadn’t thought of that for some reason! I’ll try it out, thanks

[@michaelthompson657]

@@SpeakToTheGeekTech we all have times like that, a bit too often for my liking! No problem, good luck 🤞

[@cognitor900]

On my farm you could perhaps have gates close if the dogs breach a geofence…… However I’m having problems with my trackers (got 3 dogs) and the updates. Been very glitchy last 3 months and I can’t get consistent results now. I’ve tried most things including contacting support but I’m getting dizzy from going round in circles. TIA!!!!

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

That's a good automation idea. Automated gates just for starters would be a good smart project, but tying them to a geofence is quite imaginative. My tracker has been working fine - the update frequency in Home Assistant isn't very live especially if you have the super-power-saving mode enabled. In live mode it's a couple of seconds behind realtime. There's a happy medium of more frequent updates at the expense of battery life, but I found I wanted to charge it as little as possible and would just enable live mode if I ever needed it. My contract is due up next week actually and I'm debating whether I still need the tracker - Biscuit is very obedient (or scared of being away from us) so I think it'd be an unlikely scenario for her to run off.

[@Jintus]

I am currently creating automations for away mode depending if I bring the dog with me or not

[@Jintus]

So i can keep the AC running if the dog stay at home, and keep a lamp on if it is at night

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Not a bad idea actually, I’d not considered a reverse use of presence detection… I’d only thought of “if the dog has left…” sort of automations!

[@kinocchio]

If only it had a camera view you could pull up on the app like ring

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Ha, yeah that would be brilliant! She really doesn't like the GoPro on her harness!

[@HailAnts]

As of Christmas 2022 it's on sale on Amazon for only $30..

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

If it's ever not on sale, just wait a few hours :)

[@chongfuhuang6310]

I'm a Tractive user and right now my battery only lasts 7 days, is this designed to last up to 30 days? Also, I think the subscription service is too expensive...

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

No, 7 days is about correct for me too. The subscription service can be expensive, especially for short terms, but if you're paying for 2 years+ up front then it's quite reasonable in my opinion. It's certainly inline with the competition, don't forget you're basically paying for a mobile data contract with international roaming plus contributing towards running the cloud service backend. I'd love it to be cheaper, but it's difficult to see how it could be given what's included.

[@chongfuhuang6310]

@@SpeakToTheGeekTech I purchased the subscription service to view my pet's location remotely, but the location is often not visible and occasionally I can see the wrong location.

[@user-rj1vx1zs4q]

😮

[@isabellahelgogaard6115]

I would use it for an automation that starts a robot lawn mower once daily when I am out walking the dog. My sister I a vet an robot lawn mowers and dogs are a bad combination 🤕

[@SpeakToTheGeekTech]

Oh wow, yes, you wouldn’t want to get that automation the wrong way around