The MXC Blog

MXC increases pet tracker battery life to one month

MXC Partners with Meerkat to develop pet tracking sensors with significantly longer battery life

MXC is working with Shanghai startup Meerkat to improve the battery life in devices used to track the location of domestic pets. By leveraging MXC’s blockchain protocol, Meerkat is able to increase sensor battery life from four days to one month.

There are numerous GPS tracking solutions for domestic pets, often using 3G or LTE networks to transmit a pet’s location to the owner. While these provide a broad range of service, they suffer from high energy consumption, limiting the battery life of the connected collar to two to four days. While the solution provides peace of mind, it relies on the owner to regularly charge the connected collar, or in some cases replace the battery every few days. Meerkat’s partnership with MXC will allow them to increase battery life to a month while providing a reliable wireless network for their service.

“MXC brings low-power wireless technologies to the forefront,” said Aaron Wagener, Co-Founder of the MXC Foundation. “MXC takes networks, previously limited to an individual, or a single company, and enables a massive publicly owned mesh network ideal for lower power sensors. Pet tracking is just one of the many practical applications MXC is able to help with.”

MXC turns LoRaWAN, a low-power wide-area network, into a viable solution for mobile sensors. This is accomplished by creating a platform LoRAWAN gateway owners can use to connect their gateways.

If a sensor leaves the service area of the owner’s network, it will search for the nearest MXC enabled network and bid for network access using MXC’s Smart Machine Bidding algorithm. Once an accepted bid has been agreed upon, MXC will be transferred from the sensor’s M2M Wallet to the Wallet of the connected LoraWAN gateway, and the data will be transmitted.

For Meerkat, this makes it possible for them to leverage LoRaWAN networks beyond their own infrastructure, creating a larger service area for their pet tracking app. As increasingly more companies choose to join the network, the service area will continue to grow.

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