Update: Our Indiegogo Campaign is Over, But We Are Still Taking Pre-orders For HayTag!
The interest in HayTag from distributors, resellers, and other partners has been overwhelming so we are pressing forward as planned with HayTag! You can place a pre-order here and we will deliver your HayTag by March 30, 2013!
What is HayTag?
Think of HayTag as “dogtag 2.0” -- a better way to keep pets safe and secure using smartphones and a new long-range and lightweight wireless technology. With HayTag, pet owners quickly locate a lost pet and get alerts when a pet leaves (or enters) a designated area. Owners can immediately organize a lost pet search among other HayTag users with their smartphone. And none of this requires invasive microchips or costly GPS collars.
1 in 3 Pets Go Missing, Yet Most Are Never Found
Every year, nearly 10 million pets go missing and according to the SPCA, the average recovery rate for lost dogs is less than 20%, and recovery rates for lost cats are less than 5%. Today, recovering a lost pet relies on outdated techniques like posting "lost" flyers in your neighborhood, calling local shelters and vets, and searching frantically by foot or car -- usually in vain. Some pets are "microchipped", but four competing microchip "standards" and only a 12" read range means the odds of your lost pet being recovered via microchipping are so slim many veterinarians do not even recommend spending the money. GPS-based collars are bulky, have a short battery life, and can cost more than $400 each, not including monthly subscription fees. There is a better way.
HayTag: Easy To Set Up, Easy To Use
HayTag consists of a tiny, lightweight tag that you attach to your pet’s collar and activate with your smartphone using a small HayTag adapter. Upon losing a pet, HayTag users can quickly scan the neighborhood to locate their pet using the free HayTag application available on the iPhone AppStore. Don’t have an iPhone? HayTag also supports iPad and iPod Touch. HayTag does not require a fixed “base station” and there are no monthly or annual subscription fees.
Solar Powered = No Recharging or Replacing Batteries
With HayTag, you’ll never have to worry about recharging a battery or replacing a dead one. HayTag’s wireless technology, called DASH7, achieves long range with amazingly low power draw, making the use of solar power on long range wireless devices a reality.
Find A Lost Pet
HayTag helps you find your pet using a unique direction finding feature and your smartphone’s map. No more "lost dog" signs or random desperate searching. HayTag's range is as much as 1 kilometer in the U.S., and even longer in many markets outside the U.S. HayTag even finds pets located indoors and other places where GPS can't reach.
Be Alerted When A Pet Leaves The Premises
HayTag's wireless technology makes it possible to generate alerts when your pet leaves a pre-defined area.
Check On The Status Of A Pet At Home
Get peace of mind that your pet is where they should be, even when you’re away from home. Or get an alert when a pet leaves the premises while you're away.
Create A "Posse" To Find A Pet
Invite other HayTag users to help with the search for your lost pet. Shrink the time to find a lost pet from days to hours or even minutes.
HayTag Rewards
Post a reward or earn reward money finding lost pets, get reward points, or just become a HayTag pet rescuer for the good karma points you’ll receive.
We Need Your Help!
We have dedicated the last 4+ years to developing and refining the wireless technology behind HayTag known as DASH7. You can help bring HayTag to the world by being the very first to own one!
What People Are Saying
“We see far too many people devastated when they lose loved pets and they have only traditional – and largely ineffective ways – to find them,” said Scott Delucchi, Sr. Vice President, Community Relations, with the Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA in Burlingame, California. “Simply stated, Haytag can save lives and heartache and be a lost pet’s ticket home.”
"We rescue dogs on a monthly basis with no way to trace the owner. Giving your dog a HayTag not only provides him with a way to get back home if he's lost, but it gives an owner greater peace of mind." said Liz Frome of Golden Gate Lab Rescue - www.labrescue.org. "We plan on recommending HayTag to adopters so they can make sure if they get out they can be reunited quickly."
"HayTag Looks For Lost Dogs" - RFID Journal
What is DASH7?
DASH7, the wireless technology behind HayTag, is a new "instant-on", long range, low power wireless communications standard for applications like short text messages or temperature sensor readings. DASH7 is open source, inexpensive, and operates on a single global license-free frequency band, 433 MHz. We believe it's the most important low power wireless standard in the world today.
DASH7 Was Designed for the Internet of Things!
DASH7 is unlike any other wireless technology standard on the planet today.
• Long range. DASH7’s range is many times greater than its next competitors, but also works so well indoors it makes meshing obsolete. DASH7’s range in the USA is between 200 meters and 1 kilometer, but in Europe, Australia, China, and many other markets, multi-kilometer ranges are easily achievable.
• Low power. DASH7 uses less than 1 milliwatt of power on average. No other low power wireless standard can offer full two-way, long range communications using a solar cell like DASH7.
• Instant-on. DASH7 was designed to “lock on” to fast moving things or people in ways that other wireless technologies cannot match. DASH7’s low latency is enabled through a unique query architecture that minimizes the elaborate hand-shaking typical in wireline-based protocols like IEEE 802.15.4, Bluetooth, or WiFi.
• Inexpensive. DASH7 tags can be built very inexpensively using off-the-shelf components. DASH7‘s firmware stack compiles into less than 20KB, enabling the use of lower cost silicon and minimal memory. DASH7 uses a license-free, globally available frequency, 433 MHz, which reduces the need for multiple SKU’s and simplifies interoperability across vendors.
• Open source. There is nothing proprietary about DASH7, which is a complete open standard with open source firmware. No other wireless IoT technology in the world offers this same level of openness. There is even an industry consortium, the DASH7 Alliance, to ensure interoperability across DASH7 vendors. DASH7 was also built with interoperability at the forefront of our minds.
The HayTag App
The free HayTag app for iPhone will be available via the iPhone App Store and, later in 2013, via Google Play (Android).
The setup process is simple. You attach HayTag to your pet, along with the iPhone adapter we provide you. You download and turn on the HayTag application from the AppStore, and the application immediately recognizes the tag on your pet and prompts you to personalize the information on the tag. Then, you’re done. If you have more than one pet, it’s easy to repeat the process.
Our team has been developing and delivering mobile, desktop, and cloud-based software applications for nearly 20 years and we have yet to find a customer who said an app was “too easy to use”. Our goal is to make using HayTag as drop-dead simple as possible.
Also, the HayTag app supports the iPad and the iPod Touch!
Security
When we designed DASH7, we knew that security and privacy had been a weakness for many RFID and internet of things technologies of the past, not to mention for the next wave of location-based services. With HayTag, users just check a box during the tag setup process to enable AES 128-bit encryption, making it next to impossible for a stalker or other miscreant to monitor you or your pets while using HayTag.
We also designed DASH7 with “listen before talk” capability, meaning your pet’s HayTag is NOT in some non-stop “beacon” mode, blasting its unique ID every 20 milliseconds, as some other technologies like Bluetooth might do. In effect, your pet’s HayTag stays “cloaked” until an authorized user (you and your smartphone) tell it to speak.
What Do I Get?
Each HayTag comes with an iPhone adapter or you can purchase multiple Haytags and multiple adapters if you have multiple pets or multiple owners. Each HayTag is ready to use right out of the box and if you ever need to purchase additional HayTags, they’ll all be interoperable with the same adapter and iPhone app we provide up front. We will offer free online support via the iPhone app as well as on our company’s website, but we are working to make HayTag so easy to install and use, we hope you’ll never need it.
Manufacturing
The HayTag is designed and prototyped in San Francisco and we have a trusted manufacturing partner in Southeast Asia with extensive experience building “battlefield tested” RFID devices. We will use standard, off-the-shelf parts in the HayTag with a pedigree of withstanding the occasional trampling by a tank or Humvee. Our team includes former team members from Savi Technology (now Lockheed Martin) and we know how to build the HayTag better, faster, and more cheaply than anyone else in the business. Our team also has deep experience in building mobile, desktop, and cloud-based software applications for consumer and enterprise markets, so building the HayTag app is among the simpler software projects we have ever executed.
How Our Indiegogo Funds Will Be Used
If we successfully fund this HayTag project, funds will be used for bringing the HayTag hardware to commercial readiness and to complete development of our iPhone app and back-end services. For the hardware, we want to continue to optimize the HayTag’s antenna to maximize its range, complete FCC and ERC certifications, and finalize the design of our tag and adapter motherboards. For the software, we have to complete development and testing of the iOS app and complete and test the back-end services required for some feature.
Developers
Our company is in the business of supporting developers who want to bring DASH7 to new applications and markets we haven’t even thought of yet. Developers are encouraged to back the HayTag project, including via the Developer Kit Pack, but also encouraged to visit our company website at www.haystacktechnologies.com, where we have a range of options to support developers of all shapes and sizes.
What Else Could You Do With HayTag?
We love animals and are thrilled with the response so far to HayTag from the veterinary, pet rescue, and pet owner community. But we know we’re only scratching the surface with this Indiegogo project. In addition to the ideas already being pursued by DASH7 developers in automotive and building automation, we see opportunities to solve everyday problems like tracking snowboards at a ski resort or golf clubs at the 19th hole. Or improving the way farmers manage herds of cattle or sheep. Or managing tools at a construction site. And hundreds of other applications. So backing HayTag is not only the beginning of the end of the era of lost pets, it’s supporting a critically important wireless technology with world-changing applications that just aren’t being solved today with the wireless technologies that are out there.s
Yes! HayTag is waterproof and saltwater-proof.
Yes! All backers will receive a questionnaire asking for a) how they would like their HayTag(s) personalized (animal name, your phone number, license #, etc.) as well as to select their choice of colors.
