With 63 million pets, the French are obsessed with their dogs and cats. Innovation also pampers our four-legged friends. This is “home technology”, the new eldorado for manufacturers of electronic products.
This is the new Eldorado for electronics manufacturers. Pet tech: technologies for our pets. We have to be honest, owners are often crazy about their dog and their cat. In France alone, five billion euros are spent annually on the 63 million pets owned by the French.
Smart litter that makes a veterinarian
For example, this smart litter, which is a kind of home veterinarian. It’s called Caremitou and it’s been developed by a Montpellier-based startup. In fact, this is a kind of treatment house for cats: a box that is equipped with electronic sensors and will monitor a whole set of indicators day after day, which the owner can monitor live from his smartphone.
Firstly, the presence and number of passes of the cat, whether it is moving enough or not, tracking its weight, which can indicate health problems, temperature readings, and analysis of waste to identify possible health problems, diabetes. , kidney failure.
All information can be accessed through the app to take action or share it with the veterinarian (if the cat is gaining weight, feeding less, etc.). The challenge is to identify diseases as early as possible to help the animal live in good health. It costs about 250 euros. They were awarded at CES in Las Vegas, a dedication to technology where there are countless innovations at the service of animals.
Serious products, others border on quackery
Pet supplies are a huge market. Knitted collars, smart niches: sometimes we even border on the ridiculous. The market is so huge that a company like Nestlé has launched a start-up incubator specializing in animal technology. With serious products, others bordering on charlatanism.
Products that allow you to monitor animals remotely (a huge boom after returning to face-to-face work), such as smart cameras that allow you to see and play with your dog remotely, and even throw treats at them remotely via their smartphone. Or even connected collars to measure the animal’s physical activity, as well as to geolocate it, find it if it ran away, or even determine a security perimeter.
We go overboard when we start acquiring collars that are said to be able to “translate” barks into human language by analyzing the vibrations emitted by the animal’s vocal cords. There we are clearly in a scam.
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Netflix about animals
There’s even a Netflix for animals, Petflix. It is the Briton who has made his fortune with this idea, which is a great success with the Anglo-Saxons. Relaxmydog and Relaxmycat or DogTV are dog and cat video streaming services. There are videos of beautiful walks or birds accompanied by audio frequencies that only the animals can hear and that the owners can play when they are not at home.
All this should reduce the stress and anxiety of the animals and accompany them when they are alone. I’m not sure about the “scientific” effectiveness of this thing, I’m sure only that it’s a hit. At a price of about five euros per month, the service has more than 10 million subscribers. This is not the only example: Amazon Prime offers special programs for animals.
Spotify, for its part, has launched special playlists for dogs and cats: we ask you to fill out a questionnaire about your pet, and we create a selection according to its character: songs that pulsate for a very energetic dog, a slower pace for a more calm dog. Can’t wait for headphones and a dog mp3 player.