Tailio turns your cat’s litter box into a health monitor, sees if cats can predict earthquakes

Tailio turns your cat's litter box into a smart health monitor

By Jason Hahn Published November 16, 2014

Cat lovers: Your kitty’s litter box doesn’t have to be just a dumb sandbox of unpleasant treasures. Thanks to the Tailio, litter boxes can now be turned into smart monitors that tell cat owners about the health of their feline friends.

The Tailio isn’t going to impress anyone with its appearance, since it basically looks like a plain white scale. But place a litter box atop the device and sync it with the Tailio mobile app and cat owners can keep up-to-date on their pet’s weight, waste production, and frequency of visits and behavior in the litter box.

Recommended Videos

The app tracks trends and alerts a cat’s owner if there’s any indication of health concerns that require attention or if the litter box simply needs cleaning. Information from the Tailio app can be shared with veterinarians to help diagnose any issues.

Cat owners can also use the app to get reminders to give their pets medicines and supplements, if applicable. They can also check symptoms and other resources within the app. There are social features in the app, which enable users to share photos, post status updates and connect with other Tailio users.

The Tailio is also able to distinguish between multiple cats based on their behavior and physical attributes.

Users can download the mobile app for their Android or iOS smartphone and link to the Tailio via Wi-Fi. The Tailio’s battery lasts about 2-4 weeks, depending on how many cats use the litter box atop the device and how often the litter box is used.

The team behind the Tailio also plans to partner with the National Science Foundation to study Tailio-using cats along fault lines in Southern California to see if cats can actually detect earthquakes.

The Tailio’s Kickstarter campaign has raised nearly $60,000, double the $30,000 goal. The project closes on Dec. 12, with initial shipments and the app release slated to take place in April 2015. “Early bird” backers who want to receive the device in April can get the Tailio for $99. The device is also available for $149 via Kickstarter for cat owners who are fine with a May delivery.

Former Contributor

Jason Hahn is a part-time freelance writer based in New Jersey. He earned his master's degree in journalism at Northwestern…

Topics

Emerging Tech

This bizarre email flaw is leaking corporate secrets to anyone who buys the right domain

Security researchers discovered companies are accidentally sending sensitive emails to domains that outsiders can register.

Maill app icon notifications

You don't always need to hack into a company's systems to get its secrets. Sometimes, the company will simply email them to you. A new report by WIRED's Matt Burgess has uncovered a bizarre email security problem in which companies are inadvertently sending sensitive information to domains that can be registered and controlled by outsiders. Security researchers Cory Solovevich and Mike Sheward discovered that seemingly harmless addresses such as noreply and deleteduser can become unexpected gateways to corporate information when the domains behind them aren't properly controlled.

The "hack" is buying the right domain

Emerging Tech

I found 3 ChatGPT features that turned out to be way more useful than I expected

ChatGPT on iPhone

I use ChatGPT pretty much every day, but somewhere along the way, I’ve also developed a habit of poking around and looking for features I haven’t tried yet. Some discoveries are genuinely useful, while others are the kind I’ll probably remember once every six months.

Every once in a while, though, I stumble across something that actually changes how I use ChatGPT. That happened recently with three features I’d somehow been overlooking. I’ve started using all three regularly now, and if you spend a lot of time in ChatGPT too, I think you’re missing out by not giving them a shot.

Emerging Tech

Anker just exposed a big problem with portable power stations

Appliance, Device, Electrical Device

When you're shopping for a portable power station, there's one number that's almost impossible to ignore: battery capacity. A 2 kWh battery should give you roughly 2 kWh of usable power, right? Unfortunately, things aren't quite that simple. Anker SOLIX has published new efficiency data for its S Series portable power stations, and it's putting the spotlight on something that doesn't get nearly as much attention as capacity: how much of the energy stored inside the battery actually makes it to your devices.

According to Anker, portable power stations are commonly advertised with efficiency figures measured under relatively heavy loads, where they can reach roughly 89% to 92% efficiency. But that's not necessarily how most people use one during an outage. Think about what you'd actually plug in. A Wi-Fi router might sip power continuously, a refrigerator switches its compressor on and off throughout the day, and a CPAP machine could run overnight. Together, those devices may draw just a fraction of what a large power station is capable of supplying. And that's where efficiency can start slipping.