Technical Details
Dog Blocker detects your dog when crossing a doorway, hall or room opening, keeping them out of off-limit areas of your home. A narrow (but up to 20 feet long) invisible gate is created which reduces false alarms that wide area detection would generate. Dog Blocker uses a harmless, passive, infrared sensor to detect your dog's body heat (same technology used in security systems).
Dog Blocker is highly optimized to last 2-3 years of constant monitoring on just 4 common AA alkaline batteries. Normal operating mode uses a scant 60μA (microamps) or 0.06mA (milliamps). To put that in perspective, a standard 7 watt night light bulb uses 20,000 times the power!
Siren details
The ultrasonic dog siren outputs high frequency audio that's above the range of human hearing. The frequency is focused to the sweet spot of your dog's hearing. While it can't be heard by humans, it's quite loud to your dog (around 110dB) while still being humane. It will get your dog's attention, but is totally harmless. When in training mode, a human audible beeper also sounds to alert you that the invisible barrier was breached.
Two alarm modes (controlled by "tail" switch)
- Training: Human audible beeper, ultrasonic dog siren, bright blue flashing LEDs.
- Normal: Ultrasonic dog siren, bright blue flashing LEDs.
LED flasher details
Around every 8 seconds, the LEDs put out a dim flash as a status indicator letting you (and your dog) know it's armed. This reminder to your dog is very effective in keeping them away from the off-limits area. When your dog attempts to cross the unvisible gate, high output flashing LEDs are used to obtain their attention. This flasher is much brighter than the status indicator flash and is downright scary to your dog. The LEDs are blue because your dog mainly sees the world in shades of yellow and brown. However, they can also see blue, which is more unique and therefore more noticeable to your dog.
Infrared sensor details
The sensor detects infrared (body heat) movement. It's targeted to a narrow (but up to 20 feet long) virtual gate to reduce false alarms. The sensor is the same type used in security systems, which is passive and therefore totally harmless to you and your dog. These sensors are used in homes and businesses throughout the world.
Processor
The microcontroller "brain" used in the Dog Blocker is the Atmel ATmega328P. This is the same microcontroller used in the
Arduino platform. The ATmega328P was selected because of its ultra-low power, ease of programming, availability, low cost and rich community support. It really excels at tasks like the Dog Blocker. Sensor pin interrupts are used as a trigger, so responsiveness is virtually instant and the microcontroller waits in deep sleep mode most of the time, greatly reducing power requirements.
Programming
The programming was custom designed in-house for the Dog Blocker. Extensive time was spent tweaking ultra-low power programming to insure the Dog Blocker would run years without a battery change. Custom libraries were written for other tasks, like making the ultrasonic siren much louder and higher quality without added components which would raise manufacturing costs. Years worth of prototype testing was done to insure a stable, crash-free product. The programming care that went into the Dog Blocker insures a reliable product that will last years without issue.
