Hey friends, welcome back to Grand Adventure! I'm your host Marc Guido, and I can't tell you how
excited we are that we're resuming our travels this coming Saturday! So beginning next week we
will be resuming our travel episodes with you, but until then for this week's short episode
we wanted to do something for all you camping fur parents out there, because we just bought for Zoe
the Fi GPS collar that'll help us not only keep track of where Zoe is when we're out
boondocking and she's off leash, but also provide us valuable information on Zoe's fitness -- which
quite frankly in spring she needs a little more of. So stay tuned!
So as we get ready to get back on the road I was thinking about an experience that we
had about a year ago that we shared with you in our recent 2020 camping season wrap-up episode.
And that took place along the Apache Trail in the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix.
I had been driving along, stopping often to film and to take photographs, and at one of
those stops unbeknownst to me Zoe had gotten out of the truck. And I drove off, not realizing that
Zoe was no longer in the truck. I discovered that about 20 minutes later, and thereafter had about
30 minutes of pure panic before one good Samaritan had picked up Zoe, got my phone number off her dog
tag and gave me a call. And with us getting ready to get back on the road that got me to thinking.
We do an awful lot of boondocking where she's off leash, we do an awful lot of hiking and exploring
the area. That provides many opportunities for me to get separated from Zoe. Now Zoe's
pretty good about always staying within about a hundred feet of me even when we're off leash;
however, you never know. You never know when I might have a repeat of an experience just
like what we had along the Apache Trail. So I saw an advertisement for the Fi dog collar and that got
me to buy it. They go for about $149 although they are frequently on sale for as little as 100 bucks.
And unlike a lot of the GPS dog collars I've seen this one is not big and bulky. It's lightweight,
it's relatively thin. The collar is extremely well-made with nice heavy metal buckles. It is
completely waterproof even in salt water, so I don't have to take it off when she goes swimming.
It has a light on it that activates if I choose to activate it from my cell phone.
There are all kinds of reasons for me to have this. Now I've got to be honest with you,
the fitness tracker is not one of the most important functions as far as we're concerned.
The big function for us is the ability to locate Zoe in the event that we get separated.
So I'd like to spend a few minutes sharing with you our experience thus far -- limited as it
is -- with this collar as we get ready to get back on the road and camp all across the United States.
So before we get started, let's take a quick look at what they sent us in the box.
We do of course have the Fi collar itself. There's the GPS module. It's actually relatively thin,
unlike a lot of the other GPS dog collars we've seen, and they put a nice heavy metal buckle
on there, a quick release buckle. Underneath here it says "lift," so let's lift.
This is the base station that also serves as the charging unit.
This just uses a microUSB cable. They actually do give us a charger and a microUSB cable right here,
although you can use any microUSB cable and I think I'm going to use a little 12-inch one I
have in our little charging station just to keep things neat and tidy. Now there's
no documentation in here at all other than here on the back it says, "1. Download the
app," and "2. Chase squirrels." So let's download the app and see how this works.
Now like I said Zoe needs a little bit more fitness. She's put on her winter 10. So I am going
to put on her Fi collar and we're going to start testing this and checking out how it works. See,
she's not moving very much. Come here! Alright, let's see how you're doing, my little athlete.
Yeah, right.
So here's the main portal screen on the Fi app that we've installed on our phone, on our
Android phone. It is available for iOS as well. You can see up top "Live," Zoe is at Mountain
Shadows. She's been within what's designated as our home location for the past 14 minutes,
and you can see a timeline. You can see where we went for a walk, you can see how many steps she
took and you can see where Zoe was in Mountain Shadows previously, immediately before the walk.
So if we click on the "live" it'll open a map. The default is done with Google satellite view,
but you can change it right here with the maps to either light or dark mapping, but we'll go back
to satellite view. Actually it's not Google. I just said it's Google but that's not Google,
that's some other mapping provider. But you can see where we've established (if I zoom in here)
we've established a radius that's picked up by both GPS and from our base station.
And that shows us that anytime she departs that radius that we've set there in blue, that we're
going to get an alert.This is also where I can turn on and off the light on her collar,
that little button on the right just above the map layers. Anyway, I'll leave that off. This is also
where you can activate lost dog mode, where it'll tell you where the dog is located and
keep track of her live in order to reunite with the owner. But let's get out of lost dog mode
and let's go back to the main portal screen.
We're out in the RV park's dog exercise area to help Zoe work off that winter 10.
Look at that fat jiggle! We can't wait to get back on the road and resume our
regular hikes with Zoe beginning with our upcoming episode 201. This is kind of an
exciting milestone for us to reach our 200th episode with this week's Grand Adventure video.
Fi communicates your dog's location and activities via both Bluetooth and LTE mobile networks. If
Zoe remains within the range of the base station the collar will default to low energy Bluetooth
communication with the base station to maintain battery life. And the base station will use
user-provided Wi-Fi to communicate that GPS data and fitness information to the owner's
mobile device. If Zoe travels outside the range of the base station the collar will automatically
switch over to using the mobile network to send GPS location location data to the owner's phone.
That blue geofence we established within the Fi app lets us know anytime Zoe might wander off.
Now the other things, I'll start from the right. Here's Zoe's profile where I've got a couple of
photos, and it's it's hilarious -- you'll see in a moment that it actually creates a social media for
dogs. But right next to that I'm going to click where it says "4,621" at the bottom of the screen.
That is where I pull up her fitness tracker. Today's goal is 9,000 steps. We're a little
over halfway there at 51 percent. You can tell the steps that she's walked, the distance,
her record day. This is her new fitness program to get rid of that winter 10.
You can see this by the hour, by the day, by the week or by the month.
Using that selection at the bottom of the screen, I'm going to go back to the bottom, at the menu
at the bottom of the screen and I'm going to skip over rank because she's probably ranked somewhere
near dead last right now, but that "Discover," that's hilarious! Any time anybody uploads a
photo with their dog you'll see these show up, almost like an Instagram for dogs. And people
can add comments, people can like the photos. We got a kick out of that. Anyway, this is in the
gift icon at the top, is the "Refer a friend." That's where we have our referral code, there
you can use that code that you see on your screen in order to
get extra rewards for us and get extra rewards for yourself when you sign up with Fi. Now we're
going to go over here to the notifications tab, you can see where other dogs have liked Zoe's
photos. There are other makers for other brands of collar that work with Fi, or harnesses or all
kinds of other products that you can buy to work with your Fi from other independent craftspeople.
That's pretty much a walkthrough of the entire Fi app.
So we hope that our experience with the Fi GPS dog collar has proven to be useful information
for all you camping fur parents out there, for keeping track of your favorite pooch
while you're out boondocking or exploring the great outdoors. Now we're going to put down below
in the video description our customer referral code. Understand this video is not sponsored by
Fi in any way, shape or form. We paid for this as a paying customer just like you would. However,
that referral code gets you a little extra bonus when you place your order,
and it gets us a little extra bonus when you place your order for introducing you to the Fi
dog collar. So it's kind of a "you scratch our back, we scratch yours" kind of situation -- and
I know Zoe likes getting her back scratched, too! So if you like this episode please be sure to give
us a big "thumbs up" down below! Also down below you'll find the comments section. It's where we
love to hear from you after each episode of Grand Adventure that we air every Wednesday evening.
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So until next week, from parts of the road unknown -- believe it or not we're only five days out and
we still don't know exactly where we're going to end up yet! But we'll figure it out before then,
so until next week please remember, life is nothing but a Grand Adventure! We'll see you then.