FindMyCat - The Open Source Pet Tracker

It has only been a month since I released FindMyCat to the public and since, it has received tremendous support from the IOT enthusiast community. It has been featured in outlets like Hacker News, Hackster.io, Product Hunt and gained a lot of public interest to seeing it commercialize. This is incredible news, i'm deeply humbled and motivated to keep working on improving and taking it to the next level.  

What's next for FindMyCat?

In the short-to-mid term I'm working on a couple hardware design enhancements to make the device smaller and cheaper, manufacturing the HomeStation PCB (currently code runs on NRF7002DK) and getting the code for Indoor location engine ported to the Zephyr ecosystem (possible due to FindMyCat + Zephyr collaboration on UWB ranging). In mid-to-longer term, looking at the path to commercializing the tracker PCB as a kit or standalone product, bringing Android support and looking at more optimizations with LORA + LTE fusion.

Given all the interest, I think it warrants another major release, and I am excited to be working towards it :)

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Following are some of the press articles about FindMyCat from all over the world if you would like to check out:

1. https://www.hackster.io/news/findmycat-is-the-open-source-pet-tracker-you-ve-been-waiting-for-291acfbf9e23

2. https://www.ilsoftware.it/localizzatore-open-source-come-crearlo-da-soli/

3. https://hothardware.com/news/findmycat-open-source-pet-tracking-collar-like-apple-airtag-for-cats

4. https://feber.se/pryl/hitta-din-katt-med-hjalp-av-oppen-kallkod/455966/

5. https://www.benchmark.pl/aktualnosci/otwartozrodlowy-airtag-pomoze-odnalezc-twojego-pupila.html

6. https://www.html.it/magazine/findmycat-open-source-pet-tracker/

7.  https://www.producthunt.com/newsletter/24018-makers-your-iphone  

8. https://zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/657506513

Enjoy the assembly stopmotion I made for the final assembly of FindMyCat tracker device. If you want to see a more clearer gif (size limits here makes it blurred) you can go here: https://www.findmycat.io/docs/FinalAssembly

Some pictures of me soldering the device PCB:

Testing for shorts:

I found that a lot of people in the FindMyCat Slack were using JLC PCB for their PCB manufacturing needs so I added some manufacturer specific detailed documentation in hopes to make the fabrication of FindMyCat PCB boards little bit smoother. 

Please check the guide here: https://www.findmycat.io/docs/CircuitBoard/JLCPcbManufacturing

Note that this is not sponsored by JLC at all.

FindMyCat is now collaborating with Zephyr (🎉) to build a Zephyr based UWB Ranging solution, thank you to Florian Grandel (Zephyr Project) for taking the initiative on the collaboration. 

This will be a win-win for everyone, FindMyCat codebase is currently split into two, the legacy nrf5 SDK for the indoor location engine and the newer zephyr based nRF connect for Outdoor location Engine and Homestation. 

This was largely because I could not find Zephyr based drivers for the DWM3001C chip. Upon development of Zephyr based driver, FindMyCat can get rid of the legacy codebase and switch to a much more modern Zephyr codebase.   

Working on bringing native UWB Ranging capability to Zephyr is exciting. I will keep posting updates on how it goes as I make more progress. 

One of the common feedback i've been hearing is that the device is still a little too big to fit on a cat, and I understand. One of the reasons for this is that the PCB hasn't gone through iterations yet, I was playing it safe and aiming to get a MVP done. There are a number of improvements I have identified and I will list them here for people who are interested in knowing about what's coming.

- Use a eSIM or SoftSim: The current nano-sim takes a lot of space, it needs the ESD protection IC, the SIM tray and the SIM card itself, not only adding to the space but also the cost. Nordic released their plans to support SoftSim in Q1 of 2024 so that's promising. If SoftSim doesn't work; an eSIM is a no brainer for the next revision.

- Consolidating the antennas: The nrf-9160 shares it's radio front-end between the GPS and LTE; meaning the only one of the modules can be active. Hence, we can consolidate the antenna into one and use a RF switch to connect the antenna using appropriate matching network to LTE/GPS as appropriate. Something like this: 

- Replace the DWM3001C: The Qorvo UWB module is expensive and big. This will be replaced with now available Type2AB. This reduces the cost by half and the size as well. Win win.

Improvement tracked here: issue #5

Self hosting instructions are also now available here: https://www.findmycat.io/docs/Hosting

This gives you the ability to host the cloud software on a small computer like Raspberry Pi so you can avoid cloud compute costs that occur if you choose AWS/Azure. 

Note that you will need some familiarity dealing with the Router GUI interface (it's pretty easy) to setup port forwarding. The instructions are device specific so please look up your model's instructions.

Previously, I was using HTTP instead of a more secure HTTPS for communication between the FindMyCat iOS app and the FindMyCat Cloud. This was because of the time constraints as well as my limited understanding of SSL certificates. 

But thanks to the FindMyCat slack community's help and big thank you to Joe Bell for his guidance, I was able to get SSL working. I'm using Ngnix Proxy Manager to proxy to Traccar server for a specific hostname and adding SSL or external internet traffic using Lets Encrypt. 

TLDR; no more insecure HTTP calls 🎉

I finally "docker-ized" the FindMyCat cloud side of things; what this does for folks is provide a very easy way to setup the cloud components with just a few commands. 

Github repository for Docker files:  https://github.com/FindMyCat/cloud

Brief overview: 

There are three components to the docker files

- Traccar Container

- EMQX Container

- NGNIX Proxy Manager Container

Run the three commands noted on the Engineering page link and you should be good to go. Please note that the EMQX Rule engine still needs to be setup manually, instructions are on the Engineering page.

Future improvements I'm thinking of are to build resilient containers; so they can be restarted/recreated if something goes wrong; providing reliablilty. Tracked here in the github issue #1

FindMyCat was featured on Product Hunt this morning! This is so exciting! If you feel like checking it out, you can click on the badge below :)