We worked closely with the SpotOn electronics team to continuously drive the miniaturization of the collar’s internal electronics architecture. The resulting compact form factor is not only ideal from a manufacturing and assembly cost standpoint, but it’s available in a range of sizes, it weighs less, and its look and feel affirms the SpotOn brand while projecting both durability and high performance.
Developing a submersible, rugged wearable like the SpotOn collar called on many of the tools in our toolbox. The innate manufacturing knowledge and user-centered design process we brought to bear on the project was honed over two decades spent in the medical, life science, and consumer health spaces.
Of course, being a company of dog owners helped too.
A large part of the challenge of making a smart dog collar was getting a water tight enclosure that would be easy to fit to a wide range of dog sizes. The collar section had to be flexible enough to be a snug fit, but accommodate a cellular antenna and keep a GPS antenna at the top so that there would be a good signal.
The collar also had to be integral to the rigid chassis section that housed the electronics and battery for strength and to avoid seals and exposed cables to help make everything easy to clean.
We made the decision to overmold the flexible collar in a thermoplastic silicone material, with a polycarbonate substrate, as the combination offered a unique blend of a soft feel, easy to clean, and great abrasion resistance. Additionally the materials are UV resistant, and safe to use on direct skin contact applications.
We tested initial designs using SLA parts overmolded with different durometer silicones until we were happy that the collar would fit a variety of different dogs. We also began testing of ingress protection by submerging the assembled prototypes at a depth of 1 meter for 30 minutes and checking that everything was dry internally. All of these prototypes were made in-house using our rapid prototyping machines, and then tested in our labs.
