This Tailor-Made GPS Tracker Locates Lost Kitties

You shouldn't let your cat outside. Cats are little killing machines that murder for fun, and they can have a serious impact on their local ecosystems. Scale that up to all the cat owners in a city and you have a real problem. But like any other pet, cats can get out despite their owners' best intentions. When that happens, cats become almost impossible to find if they don't want to be found. To keep from losing his particularly mischievous cat, Pumpkin, Chitlange Sahas designed this GPS tracking system for felines.

Like many cat owners, Sahas likes to take Pumpkin outside for short periods of time as a little treat. Sahas tries to keep Pumpkin within sight at all times, but sometimes Pumpkin manages to evade supervision. That's a scary experience for Sahas, so he decided to build this GPS tracker. It attaches to a conventional cat harness, so it is comfortable to wear. The enclosure looks really nice and shouldn't cramp the style of even the most dapper of felines. It has enough battery capacity to last for around 12 days between charges and has accurate GPS monitoring through a web app. And best of all, "Find My Cat" is open source so you can build your own.

There are two electronic components doing the heavy lifting in this project: a Raspberry Pi single-board computer (any "B" model should work) and a DFRobot A9G GSM/GPS module. The latter component both provides the current GPS location and a cellular connection through which the Raspberry Pi can upload the location data. Additional components include a USB-TTL converter, a TP4056 battery charger module, and a lithium-ion battery. Users will, of course, also need a SIM card connected to some cellular service. The bandwidth requirements are low, so the costs should be minimal.

The unique and attractive enclosure would take serious skill to craft by hand from brass and walnut like Sahas did. But Sahas published the CAD models, which one can use for 3D printing or CNC machining if they lack the tools or talent that Sahas had. Similarly, the software setup may be intimidating to some. But all of the software, code, and tools are open source, so you don't need to pay anything to use them. After setup, users can access a web app that displays a map containing the exact location of the Find My Cat tracker as it updates in real time.

It is a gorgeous solution to a real problem. But if you don't have the skill or money to tackle this project and you're an iOS user, we would recommend buying an Apple AirTag. It won't be as accurate or versatile as Find My Cat, but an AirTag is affordable, easy to setup, and works well for finding lost pets.