Abigayle Callahan

IST 195

October 23, 2017

Project 1 Final Paper

My idea to invent a SmartCollar was inspired by the behavior of my golden doodle

named Oliver. Oliver is a very loving dog, however his love for us can occasionally lead to

envious acts of aggression when it comes to meeting other people and animals. Oliver, like many

other dogs, is completely unpredictable when meeting other dogs, half the time he wants to be

their best friend, and half the time he aggressively attacks and bites them. We can no longer

bring Oliver out in public anymore because although some of the time he is very friendly with

other dogs there is no way for us to predict when he will snap. The SmartCollar would resolve

this issue by measuring the heart rate of your dog (the same way a Fitbit does for humans) and

cause the collar to change colors dependent upon the dogs mood. For instance, when you are

calmly walking down the street with your dog, the collar may appear green, however if you then

come within sight of another dog, the collar may change to the color red if your dogs heart rate

has drastically increased, letting you know that it is probably a good idea to remove your dog

from the scene and avoid getting any closer to the other dog. Otherwise, the collar may remain

green if the dog has not demonstrated any internal signs of behavioral changes, giving you the go

ahead to approach the other dog.

In order to advertise my idea for SmartCollar I believe that the first essential step would

be to create a unique, professional webpage for the product. The best way to create the webpage

would be through coding in order to have complete control over the customization and layout of

the webpage to ensure that the aesthetic of the site matches that of the product. The webpage will
include links to several different forms of social media accounts also based around advertising

the product. Links to other forms of social media ensures a greater probability that people would

view the product, and also helps spread the word about the product much faster.

The social media accounts for SmartCollar will include but not be limited to Instagram,

Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat. The Instagram will include high resolution images to create a

professional aesthetic, and will also include videos of the SmartCollar in use by happy

customers. The Facebook for SmartCollar will give information about the company. For

example, the Facebook page will give a link to the online site, and also list all the stores that sell

SmartCollars, their locations, and store hours. Facebook pages for businesses also allow satisfied

customers to like the page which will then cause the page to show up on several different

newsfeeds every time it is liked. The act of liking will then start a ripple effect. Twitter will

be used to tweet updates about the product, for example if a new color or pattern is being

released, if a sale is going on, or if any other improvements are made. The Twitter will be used to

retweet customers tweets about the product, and encourage other Twitter users to share their

experience with SmartCollar in exchange for a discount on their next purchase. Lastly, Snapchat

will advertise the product thorough Snapchat videos that customers have taken of their dog

wearing the SmartCollar.

In order to advertise the product successfully it will also be essential to design ads to

place on other websites where dog owners may be active such as dog.com, petsmart.com, or

Petco.com. Placing ads on these websites will help attract the most relevant audience for the

SmartCollar.

When developing the SmartCollar it is very important that the collar is built with the

correct hardware in order for it to perform the necessary functions. Similar to main computing
functions, it is necessary for the SmartCollar to be able to accept input, process input, and

produce output. In order to accomplish these functions, the SmartCollars system unit will

include a battery, a power supply, memory, processor, and a motherboard.

The motherboard of the collar will contain the SmartCollars processor. The Central

Processing Unit (CPU), including chips made from silicon, is responsible for the speed at which

the collar is able to function, and consists of the control unit, the ALU, and the registers. The

Central Processing Unit must also have an adequate clock speed as well as an adequate number

of cores in order for the processor to perform sufficiently.

Another essential aspect of the SmartCollars hardware will be the light guides for the

LEDs which display colors depending on the dogs heartrate, communicating to the owner,

whether their dog is feeling anxious or calm.

On the exterior of the collar will be port in order to charge the collar. The port will be a

micro USB port for the convenience of the consumers, because chances are a majority of people

already have extra micro USB cords laying in their house from their early flip phones.

The memory within the system unit will consist of both volatile and nonvolatile memory.

The ram memory within the collar is where the data from the instructions waiting to be processed

by the central processing unit will be held. The ram memory only provides temporary memory

and the contents are deleted as soon as the collar is powered off.

As discussed in the previous entry, the SmartCollar must be capable of accepting input (a

dogs heartrate), processing input (determining if heartrate reflects aggression or calmness), and

producing output (displaying the appropriate color to reflect the dogs possible future behavior

such as red, yellow or green).

 Another necessary aspect of the SmartCollar is the inclusion of an RFID tag which will

communicate wirelessly with the owners phone, alerting them with a notification when a dogs

collar is about to turn red, giving the owner the opportunity to remove their dog from the given

situation. The RFID tag will also allow the owner to locate the collar from their smartphone if it

was to get misplaced.

By communicating machine to person through the app associated with the collar, the

SmartCollar will add to the list of objects involved with todays Internet of Things. Over time

the SmartCollar will hopefully become so common among dog owners that it becomes one of the

pieces of technology that weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are

indistinguishable from it (Mark Weiser)

The app associated with the SmartCollar which will be downloaded to the owners phone

could function properly using ASCII since only basic communication will be transferred through

the app. However, in preparation for the SmartCollar becoming globally popular, it would be

best for the app to be equipped with Unicode in order to communicate in different languages.

The SmartCollar app will take up roughly around 100 megabytes on the owners phone.

Cloud computing will be used to store all of the SmartCollars business data such as

transactions, inventory, gross revenue, and more. Cloud computing will be used in order to easily

expand available storage instantly without having to monitor multiple wired networks.

My hope is that the creation of the SmartCollar will give dogs, who are no longer able to

go out in public due to the owners fear that their dog may snap unexpectedly, the opportunity

to enjoy life outside of the house. Keeping a dog inside for excessive amounts of time is

unhealthy, and like humans, all dogs need social interaction. With the ability to monitor your

dogs heartrate and be alerted when a dogs emotions change, both owners and dogs will be
given the opportunity to experience more of the world than previously thought. All thanks to the

creation of the SmartCollar.