[Martin] lives in a small village about 25km from his job in a major city. Occasionally his home alarm system will trip and he will rush home to make sure everything is okay. So he decided to buy a DVR system instead… and he turned his dog’s collar into one of the main sensors.

As you may know, DVR’s also have sensor inputs in addition to loads of video cameras. These can be very handy to tell you other things that a small video clip will not, such as moisture, humidity, temperature etc. [Martin’s] DVR has 8 sensor inputs which he has configured to be the normally open type of sensors. By using a Sharp 817 optocoupler and a Funky v3 wireless module he made one of the sensor inputs wireless.

On the other end of the Funky wireless setup is a Kinder Surprise shell attached to his dog’s collar. In addition to the wireless module, it also contains a rudimentary 2-axis shock sensor consisting of a small spring that floats over a metal pin — when moved violently (when the dog is running about) it makes contact and [Martin’s] DVR alerts him by email and sends him pictures from the system.

He suspects he’ll be getting lots of pictures of the dog getting spooked by cats wandering by.