2 Teen Inventors Pitch CollaRadar to TV’s America’s Greatest Maker

Teen geniuses Gabriel Argush and Dean Dijour have come together to create a pet loss prevention system that not only tracks where your pet is in real time, but also prevents them from running away.

Their company is called Collarator and their first product is called CollaRadar – it debuted just a few weeks ago on TBS’s America’s Greatest Makers. It’s a new reality TV challenge where teams of makers invent game-changing technology all for a chance at the $1 million grand prize. The CollaRadar does a few things that other systems either don’t have or are usually so expensive, most don’t have the means to purchase it.

The CollaRadar is a wearable pet loss prevention and real-time tracking system. It slides onto standard collars, so you can keep the original pet collars on your pet. The inspiration for the system came from Gabriel’s chocolate lab Archie who had a tendency to run off. The last straw came when he took off and the stress took its toll on his human family. The teen decided to take matters into his own hands and team up with Dean to create the CollaRadar.

Related: What To Do If Your Dog Gets Lost

Using your smartphone, you create a geo-fence around a particular area where you don’t want your dog to cross. Once you’re happy with the placement, those coordinates are instantly sent to the device on the dog’s collar. If your dog happens to cross that border, you’ll receive a text message saying your dog has breached the geo-fence.

The difference with the CollaRadar and all the other systems in the market is that this collar combines the pet tracking system with a pet loss prevention system. The latter involves burying a wire beneath the soil and that wire has an electrostatic deterrent and when a dog breaches that fence, they will feel that electrostatic deterrent via the collar. The pet tracking system merely tells you where your dog is in real time, but doesn’t do anything should you realize your dog has gone further than where you wanted them to be.

Related: Findster, The GPS Pet Tracker With No Monthly Fees

The CollaRadar has the best of both worlds… with the added benefit of not needing to flip your backyard upside down to bury a fence. Just use your smart phone to set up the perimeters of the geo-fence. If your dog leaves the assigned area, your phone will alert you to the breach.

There are three different levels of deterrents when it comes to keeping your pet within the coordinates you have chosen, two of which are included in your purchase when the CollaRadar eventually goes on sale in the near future. As the dog approaches the geofence, they’ll receive a warning vibration via the collar and usually, this is enough to make your dog think “hey, I shouldn’t go there”. Should they cross the geofence, you can choose between a second deterrent, which is a high-frequency sound coming from the speaker embedded into the collar or a third deterrent, which is an electrostatic deterrent.

If you’re not sure what an electrostatic deterrent is, it is essentially a shock which in and of itself is certainly not the most dog-friendly way to train your pooch. However, this third option is completely optional, as most pets can be trained with just the vibrations and speaker beeps.

Should the CollaRadar make it through the program and come into existence, Dean and Gabe predict that it will cost about $30 to make in bulk. To roll over a profit, it will surely cost a little bit more than that if they hit store shelves but if this one system does the same job as two, I would definitely have no problem having these two take my money!