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(More customer reviews)This sounded like an interesting idea to me... it basically comes down to a collar attachment that detects sound and motion from your dog and then wirelessly sends the info to a program on your computer, which then writes a short tweet on a twitter account set up for your dog. I didn't have extremely high hopes for this device, but thought it would be fun to check in on my dogs during the day. I was hoping to be able to see a tweet every once in a while showing me that they were barking out the window, running around the house, or maybe napping while I was gone during the day. My low expectations weren't even close to being met by this device.
2 major problems:
1) It's really big! The device you hang on the dog's collar is 2 inches in diameter and 1 inch thick. The chain it is suspended on is another 1.5 inches, basically making the entire device 3.5 inches hanging off your dog's collar. This might not be a big deal to some larger dogs, but my 20 lb. shelties hated it. They would try to run and the puppytweets attachment would continually swing up and smack them in the face. They kept trying to bite it off and I constantly found them walking around with it in their mouth. They just hated having it on their collar. The most amusing thing that came out of buying this product is that the dog not wearing the device would try to chase after the other and grab on to the product while it was swinging around. They made a game out of this giant tag that flailed about while they ran. As I said though, this might not be a problem for larger dogs, and I would not have rated the product poorly just because of this aspect.
2) More importantly, it just doesn't work well. Setting up a program to randomly tweet and say it was my dogs doing it probably would have the same result that using the device did.
Opening the box, you get 3 items: the tag that I described before, a rather large and clunky usb drive (hopefully you don't have many usb ports close together if you plan on using this), and a separate 2032 battery. Basically, you set the device up by downloading a program from the puppytweet website, installing it, setting up the usb drive, and then unscrewing the tag, putting in the battery, pressing the reset button, and then letting the program do it's setup. I had to go through the process a couple of times before it would actually match up with the tag, which is another gripe I have - there's no way to tell if the tag is on or if it's even working. A sound, light, or something would have been nice, but there's nothing... and no way of telling if your battery is dead or not. It just tells you when it is matched. You go through a process of setting up a twitter account (or using an existing one), waiting for it to tell you the collar and USB drive are matched, and then put it on the dog's collar and wait for the tweets.
An initial one came saying something like, "Puppy Tweets Rocks!" (it most certainly does not). I waited for a while longer and nothing else showed up while I played with my dogs for almost 30 minutes. I had them running around, barking, jumping... no tweets though. I went back to the program and checked the status: It said everything was good. Why no tweets then? Well, you can set it at three different frequency settings, and I had it on medium, so now I bumped it up to high frequency. Immediately, three more tweets came by: "In typical fashion, the cat down the street is registered as an Independent. They can't ever commit to anything.", "Why? Because I can.", and "I've got a new leash on life!"... then silence. I let the dogs play with it on their collars for a while (even though they obviously hated it), and absolutely no tweets went by for 2 hours, even though I had it on the high frequency setting. There was so much activity, running, barking.... why wouldn't this device tweet about any of it? I thought maybe it was disconnected, but the status still said everything was fine.
I decided to give it a little more time and just let the dogs keep it on for a little while longer... over the course of 5 hours, three more tweets came through on the high frequency setting: "I
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Tweets are the new Barks! Ever wonder what your pup is doing while you're away?Well, now you can get the 411 with text messages from Puppy Tweets!Whenever your dog moves, barks (or just naps), the tag knows it and sends a WiFi signal to your computer which then sends you a Tweet via Twitter.Simply set up a Twitter page for your dog and your Puppy Tweets tag starts generating Tweets.Puppy Tweets comes pre-loaded with over 500 phrases that put a humorous or insightful spin on your dog's daily activity.For example, a bark may generate a Tweet of: "I bark because I miss you. There I said it. Now hurry home."A quick run through the house could produce: "I finally caught that tail I've been chasing and...OOUUUCHH!"Invite your friends and family to follow your pet on Twitter and help your dog follow his or her favorite puppy pals or celebrities.Puppy Twitter lets you connect with your pet over the Internet.It's a great way to brighten your day 'cause a Tweet from your pooch is a virtual smooch!
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