It’s an idea right out of science fiction: a talking pet collar. And it’s here thanks to entrepreneur John McHale who almost lost his dog to a rattlesnake bite. This dog collar comes with the ability to select one of several preprogrammed voices and customize all sorts of settings for your pet. Some are quite over the top:
“You can select your pet’s values, like compassion, justice, and courage. There are settings for its religious beliefs, power of forgiveness, or thoughts on freedom, fate, and destiny. You can give it a take on politics and broad topics like globalism.”
In WIRED’s early review of this collar, the results were much less of a translator and more of a randomized statement generator from your pet that might occasionally match their behavior. Like a lot of very early experimental tech, it is much more novelty and fun than practical or useful. But there are a handful of promising features, such as the ability to offer a warning if the collar detects a rattlesnake nearby or an alert if the collar senses you might have forgotten a feeding. Altogether probably not enough to justify the steep annual subscription of nearly $500.
