by Beacon
The mobile app with everything you need to keep your pet safe and healthy.
Pets come in all shapes and sizes, but one thing they all have in common is a natural curiosity of the world around them. Sometimes this curiosity can cause your pet to wander a little too far from home and not be able to find his way back. When your best friend is lost, you want to get them home safe and sound as quickly as possible, and that’s why we created Beacon.
Beacon is a mobile app that’s designed to get the word out about your lost pet fast. One click in the app is all it takes to activate Beacon’s lost pet alert system. Seconds after reporting your pet lost, a notification containing your pet’s information is instantly sent out to all Beacon users in the vicinity.
Not only does the alert include your pet’s picture, name, temperament, and emergency medical information, there’s also an optional soundbite that other Beacon users can play through their phones. Instead of your pet hearing a stranger’s voice calling their name, they’ll hear your voice, making them more likely to come when called. With Beacon, it’s like you’re searching in a hundred different places simultaneously! And with your permission, Beacon can also automatically post the same lost pet alerts to social media to help get the word out to even more people!
When a Beacon user finds your pet, they can get in touch with you immediately and reunite you with your best friend fast using the contact information supplied in the notification.
If time passes and your wayward explorer slips through the initial search net, the search area is widened and more Beacon users are alerted to help maximize the chances of your pet being located. Since the app is free to install and free to respond to lost pet notifications, anyone can help join the search.
As they say on TV… “and that’s not all!”
We designed Beacon to be the most useful pet-related app available, and we packed it with features to turn you from a mild-mannered pet owner into your pet’s superhero!
Beacon includes a powerful, easy to use medication reminder system that will notify you when it’s time to give your pet her medication, and continue reminding you until you confirm that it’s done. Hourly to monthly, pills to injections, Beacon tracks it all for you so that your pet never misses a single dose, and can even remind you when it’s time to order additional medication so you never run out. You can also track veterinary appointments, pet food and other supply levels, vaccination records, and pet weight right out of the box, and if that’s not enough, you can create your own custom alerts and reminders!
A well-trained pet is less likely to wander too far from home, and more likely to come when called. Training is something many pet owners overlook or find to be too time consuming, but it doesn’t have to be! Beacon comes with a training program that guides you step-by-step through training your pet. We’ll show you how to get started by using the app to produce a consistent, repeatable noise that, when coupled with positive reinforcement, your pet will learn to associate with the desired behavior. Your pet will master sitting, staying, and coming when called in no time! With training, consistency is key, and Beacon will help remind you when it’s time to practice and which lesson to work on.
You want your pets to receive the best care, but finding quality pet health and other service providers can be difficult. Using your location, Beacon can show you all the service providers in your area along with reviews from other users. Find anything from dog-walkers to veterinary care, poop-scoopers to pet sitters, all filtered by distance to your location. Traveling with your pet? Find pet-friendly hotels, pet supply stores, and emergency veterinary services wherever the road takes you.
Animal shelters take in lost and homeless pets and give them food and care until they’re reunited with their owners or adopted by a new family. These shelters are often under-funded and rely heavily on donations from the local community, and so to help in this effort, Beacon is providing advertising space to local animal shelters absolutely free.
Placement of the ads will not impact app usage, and will allow local shelters to let their community know how they can help the most. From donations of towels, food, and other supplies to listing pets in need of a new home, Beacon will allow shelters everywhere to reach out to the people who can help the most.
We truly believe this app can help improve the quality of life of pets and their owners everywhere, but we can’t bring it to life on our own. Please consider supporting this campaign so we can finish developing Beacon and get it into the hands of animal lovers everywhere!
One of the best ways you can support the campaign is by simply spreading the word and sharing with others!
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How is the money going to be used?
The funds raised will primarily cover development costs including coding and design of the application itself and also the server-side infrastructure necessary for everything to work. We’ll also be using some of the funds to cover administrative costs involved with working with thousands of animal shelters to get their information into the app.
Who’s the team behind Beacon?
Jon Oxtoby – developer. Jon’s been coding professionally for over 15 years, and for much longer as a hobbyist (he wrote his first ever code on the family ZX Spectrum 48k back in the early 80s). He lives in northern Ohio with his wife and family of 5 rescues (2 cats, 3 dogs).
Luke Southern – artist. Luke has been a graphic designer, illustrator and art director for 9 years. With hobbies ranging from drawing and photography, to woodworking and DIY projects. He lives in Oklahoma City and has helped rescue 4 dogs and 5 cats and currently lives with his 2 dogs.
While this may be our first Kickstarter campaign, it’s far from our first rodeo when it comes to building and deploying awesome applications. With that experience comes the understanding that even the most well-planned development project can hit unexpected bumps in the road. Here’s what we’re most likely to run into:
1. Delays from submitting the app to the various app stores. Beacon will be available for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone and apps are sometimes denied entry into the app stores for various reasons. We’re using industry standard tools and libraries to minimize the chances of that happening and of course will keep you updated should we run into any approval delays.
2. Unexpected development challenges. With as many moving parts as this app has, it’s very difficult for us to anticipate every little thing that could go wrong during development. But we’ve been working on this idea for several years and have prototyped many of the major components along the way in an effort to prove the concept and have yet to hit any major barriers.
We believe communication is the key to a successful launch and are excited to update our backers every step of the way with progress updates and sneak peaks at the application.