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Tech

Petguard lets you set out-of-bounds areas for your furry friends

By Stephanie Topacio Long Digital Trends
Published | Updated

As much as you love your pets, there are places in your home where you just don't want them to go -- whether for safety reasons or even your sanity. (No one enjoys having to replaces footwear after their dog gets into the shoe closet, for example.) Unfortunately, you can't always be there to police them, and they can get up to a lot of mischief when you're not around.

Training your pets to stay out of spaces where they don't belong requires consistency that is difficult to provide, unless you can spend every minute of your day watching them. Petguard is a system that aims to overcome this challenge. By placing a pet tag on your four-legged friend's collar, you'll be able to monitor your pet's location in the home at all times on the Companion App. Additionally, with sentinels that you place in areas you'd like to be pet-free zones, an alarm will go off whenever your pet gets within a range you set, giving you the chance to intervene as needed.

Conveniently, the Ultrasonic alarm can also be set so that it's only audible to animals, discouraging them for wandering into designated areas, yet not disturbing humans. Petguard is extremely accurate, measuring line-of-sight distances between a sentinel and a pet tag to within centimeters. Sentinels can detect the tag when it comes within an 8-meter diameter, but the system allows you to set smaller ranges as well. As you use Petguard and track your pet's location throughout the home, you'll be able to see where he or she spends his time and how effective your training has been.

Though the system is fully working and tested, the company, Sensonix, is seeking support in adding final features and gearing up for production. Those interested can join the crowdfunding on Kickstarter. For $92, you'll get a sentinel and a pet tag, which is $45 less than its retail price. If you can't wait till November 2015 to get your hands on the system, the upper end of the funding spectrum ($1,544) will deliver it to you in September so you can help fine-tune it. A tour of the development facility is included, but you'd have to get yourself to Sydney, Australia to enjoy it.