
How I taught my dog to text me selfies - gregorymichael
https://www.twilio.com/blog/2015/03/how-my-dog-sends-selfies.html
======
sharkweek
Used to train dogs at a local shelter in my free time. It was honestly one of
the most fun parts of my week.

We used clicker training, and it always impressed me how even the oldest of
dogs could learn new tricks (har har) if you found what motivated it, and then
incentivized a specific action based on that motivation.

Even more fun was finding a really smart dog who you could teach to do the
craziest stuff. Had one who probably learned 25ish tricks in his short time at
the shelter. He was so motivated to learn. It was a pretty easy sell to the
right adopter when you showed them you could point your finger at the dog,
yell "HANDS UP" and he'd sit up with his paws in the air, you'd yell "BANG"
and he'd fall over dead. How could you ever resist?

Example (not my video):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lky1xsqYGUo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lky1xsqYGUo)

~~~
alexsb92
How would one train a dog to do something like the Hands Up routine? I've
never had a dog, so I'm not sure how I'd get the whole motion across to the
dog.

~~~
sharkweek
You want to get the dog really comfortable with sit, stay and a "warm clicker"
(Basically just get them used to the click noise = treat). Once they're good
on those, have the dog sit as you hold the treat above them in a way that
makes it so their nose is pointing straight up and they start to stretch their
body to try and reach for the treat. Keep doing this until their paws start
coming off the ground as they sit back on their hind legs. Click and treat
repeatedly so they know this is what you want them to do.

Do this repetitiously until they start getting used to putting their paws up
then start working on getting them to sit like that for a few seconds. As a
reminder lots of clicks and treats to let them know they are doing what you
want. At this point you can start introducing the voice commands.

After they have stay down, you can move into "bang" by once again holding a
treat in a way that they fall to the ground, then immediately click and treat
again repeatedly. Then you start working on getting them to roll over in the
same motion. It's ok to sort of push them with your hands a bit to show them
the physical motion you are looking for as long as you click and treat in
little increments to show them that what they're doing is "good."

Probably too long winded, but if you look up "bang" dog tricks on YouTube
there are a lot of handy guides. My final advice is to pay attention to how
much fun you think your dog is having. Some love mental stimulation, others
not as much. If the dog is losing interest, then it's probably time to call it
quits for the day, as they'll stop thinking the training is fun.

Really, it's quite humorous how close human psychology is to that of my dog.

~~~
ojilles
It al reminded me a lot of programming in general. For example, unconscious
assumptions:

Once saw a dog that only wanted to perform the tricks in the training ground
but not for example at the owners home: the dog had assumed that the
combination of (command for the trick && location+training ground) was the
trigger. That was fun to see. Other examples included dog trainers that could
only successfully give the command while wearing the red coat he was wearing
while training the dog, etc.

------
ChuckMcM
I have discovered that my labrador would kill himself trying to figure out how
to solve differential equations if he knew he could get a bite of ginger bread
for it :-).

That said, having raised a puppy that was destined for guide dog training, the
trick is early on getting the dog to understand that you are asking it to do
stuff. That is a big part of puppy training, and once trained, the dog will
look for you to ask it to do new things, and knows that if it figures them out
quickly you will reward it. It has been one of the more amazing experiences in
my life.

~~~
gregorymichael
I feel like my dog has way more potential than I have the ability to unlock.
Any resources you'd recommend on training?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Well besides the guide dog's puppy raising guidelines (which are fairly long
and detailed) we took him to an agility school after he was career changed[1]
which used a device that make a 'click' sound (clicker) which was used to tell
the dog "yes that exact thing" and treats. Apparently that is pretty common
(but I was not aware at the time). But between the two experiences I don't
think there is anything I couldn't train him to do, if I can communicate
exactly what it is.

[1] Seriously, that is what the Guide dog folks call it when a dog washes out
of the program, in our case it was for a skin allergy which would have been
undetectable for a blind person to notice, not for his lack of trainability.

------
joshjdr
My wife doesn't have an HN account, but I showed her this article and here's
her comment...

Great article! As a behavior analyst, let me name the research-supported
behavioral interventions used here - stimulus control (pairing the word
"light" with the behavior), most-to-least physical prompting (forcing the paw
on the light), and differential reinforcement (reward for pressing the light;
no reward for not pressing the light).

~~~
gregorymichael
That is so cool! Thank you for sharing.

------
bglazer
1\. Train dog to press button

2\. Train dog to press button when bell rings

3\. Connect bell to the internet

4\. SaaS dog selfies

5\. Profit!

~~~
scuba7183
Actually not a bad idea. Set up a site and make it easy to donate $1 or some
low amount

~~~
astazangasta
You guys should read about this artist's exhibit, where he has himself shot by
a paintball gun hooked up to the Internet:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafaa_Bilal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafaa_Bilal)

Don't do this to the poor dog.

~~~
mekaj
Got me intrigued. Here's a link to Bilal's page on the project:
[http://wafaabilal.com/domestic-tension/](http://wafaabilal.com/domestic-
tension/)

------
Mz
People on the Internet will know you're a dog if you text them selfies.

------
broabprobe
Cheap stylish wooden boxes for cheap is the biggest thing about this.
Definitely will consider cigar boxes for my next project.

~~~
lawry
I've also had luck with 3.5" HD enclosures, they were as cheap as the drive
without enclosure and with a bit creativity make for very nice looking
enclosures for electronic projects.

Another pro-tip I picked up is using match-boxes for storing electronics
(resistors, connectors, small modules). They are cheap and you can tape/glue
them together to create arrays of small boxes. The sides are clear thus
perfect to write what they contain.

~~~
ansgri
your match-box protip is known for at least half a century to everybody who
was even remotely interested in electronics in USSR :)

------
brk
Did the OP get permission from the dog to use those copyrighted photos?

~~~
BuildTheRobots
Looks like this isn't actually a problem:
[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/22/monkey-
bus...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/22/monkey-business-
macaque-selfie-cant-be-copyrighted-say-us-and-uk)

------
chairmankaga
Pretty cool! Soon you can teach her to text you when your dryer finishes its
cycle (;

~~~
gregorymichael
That was an awesome project using pretty much the same tech! For those who
haven't seen it:

[http://makezine.com/2014/12/15/laundry-text-message-
alerts-w...](http://makezine.com/2014/12/15/laundry-text-message-alerts-with-
arduino-yun/)

~~~
mattdotc
That's a pretty decent idea for a project, but I would have instead hooked
into the buzzer signal.

The author over-complicated his solution, but that doesn't make it invalid.

~~~
cdcarter
My landlord wouldn't love me very much if I started taking apart my dryer to
hook a mysterious wired object to the buzzer...

~~~
djeikyb
i thought the same thing until i read the actual instructions:

[http://www.instructables.com/id/Washer-Dryer-Laundry-
Alarm-u...](http://www.instructables.com/id/Washer-Dryer-Laundry-Alarm-using-
Arudino-SMS-Text-/?ALLSTEPS)

it uses an accelerometer to detect the motion of the washer. no need to
dissect your large home applicances!

------
nikanj
I'm starting to think we as a society might be focusing our efforts
incorrectly

------
xerophyte12932
A lot of comments about training dogs. Anyone has any experience training cats
here? I have found them to be too moody for something like this.

~~~
precisioncoder
My wife has clicker trained our cats based on what she found on youtube
videos. You need a smart cat (Ours are bengals) who loves treats and a lot of
time but it's very doable. Our cats can both do the following tricks: Sit,
Stand, High five, Turn around, Roll the ball, and Knock over the object

------
jkot
Nice, I guess author does not have a kids yet. It is fun to teach 1 year old
howto use phone.

edit: author has a kid, congrats

~~~
gregorymichael
If you look closely in the background of that video, you'll see a Mamaroo.
She's only four months, so for the time being the dog is way more trainable.

Curious, have you read anything / have any concerns about introducing your
kids to screens that early? I'm so afraid I'm rewiring her brain too young
when I see her staring at my phone.

~~~
jethro_tell
From what I've read, most known damaging screen time studies have been with
non-interactive TV and extrapolated to other digital screens. I'm under the
impression there will be more screen time for my kids than there was for me
and I try to steer that towards problem solving and interaction, as opposed to
consumption time. My daughter (3) loves to take pictures with my phones and
tablets and crop, color, add the silly effects. Somehow ( and probably
misguidedly) I view this as better than putting her in front of a movie.

In my view, it is probably more important to control the specific activities
more than the blanket "screen time".

------
savege
Hello everybody on this page,i want to thank God for using Prophet Suleman as
my source of savior after 9 years of my marriage and my lover left me alone
for 6 months,Have just been heart broken until i go in contact with Prophet
Suleman after i saw a ladies testimony on how she was helped by this same
Propht Suleman,So i decided to get in contact with him and when i told him all
my problems he laughed and said this is not a problem that everything will be
ok in 2 days time.Exactly the 2nd day my husband called me i was shocked and
what surprise me the most was that his behaviour was normal as the man i got
married to.Am so grateful to dr Kasee for what he did for me, if you wish to
contacting him Email: prophetsuleman@gmail.com

------
robbrown451
Cute (and great looking dog). Would be nice to have a way for us to subscribe
to Kaira's selfie feed.

------
kirankoduru
That program looks so simple. Never wrote a program for an Arduino before but
I guess its time now.

~~~
lawry
Funny as it is, you'll be spending more time figuring which components to buy
and which ones you actually need. And eventually figuring out how to build
enclosures/boxes for you projects. Power supply also seems to be a difficult
topic to get right if you're building wireless projects.

There are tons of examples, tutorials, libraries available for Arduino, and
keep in mind once you're done with prototyping you can just buy the Atmega328P
(5$) and if you add an ESP8266 (5$) to the mix you can make anything wireless.

~~~
patrickpkt
Depending on what you're doing, you may be able to get by with just the
ESP8266. The ESP-07 modules break out all of the gpio pins, and the NodeMCU
firmware lets you program it in Lua.

------
tjradcliffe
This reminded me of a weird little web-comic-ish thing about a guy who taught
his cat to text: [http://louisvsrick.com/](http://louisvsrick.com/)

------
bshimmin
Honestly, this headline would be perfect for False Medium:
[https://twitter.com/falsemedium](https://twitter.com/falsemedium)

------
coffeebro
Awesome stuff. Now, how do we train dogs to bring us beer :)

~~~
gregorymichael
Uhhh, this is a thing:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqUkX4QBjfA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqUkX4QBjfA)

------
akilism
amazing

~~~
gregorymichael
Thank you. Much appreciate that. It was a ton of fun -- first foray into
hardware hacking.

------
SixSigma
so, where are they ?

~~~
gregorymichael
You can see them in the youtube video, but good point -- a lot of folks don't
watch those. Let me add them to the article.

edit: Added. Thank you.

------
Theodores
"How I taught my dog how to market twilio.com"

SMS is all very interesting but it is not 2013 any more so there is no need to
send an SMS (paying people on the way) when you can just send an email. It
still pops on the person's phone as a new message (at least in Android world,
no idea how those iPhones work). Email also has better delivery, speaking as
someone in a poor reception area I cannot reliably receive messages, however,
wifi works pretty good at home and I can get emails with that whereas wifi
does me no favours for SMS.

A few years ago I did have SMS for my own version of an uptime monitor,
however, when my credits ran out I didn't miss the SMS messages at all (my
script also emailed). That led to my 'discovery' that being able to send an
SMS from a bit of code might be impressive however it is also not that useful
in the first world. Maybe this product is better suited to dogs in the
developing world somewhere.

~~~
notatoad
Yeah, i love twilio, but its value is in integrating with legacy services or
customers who are stuck on old technologies. Using it to build new services
around SMS/MMS that don't need to be built on SMS seems a little backwards.

"so we take this awesome system, it takes pictures that we upload it to
dropbox, a perfectly acceptable destination for pictures. and then, for some
strange reason, instead of sending an email or just leaving it there in
dropbox or doing any of the other great things we can do with pictures, we
make an MMS"

~~~
hayksaakian
Both of you missed something big about SMS/MMS:

It's not really a messaging system, it's a push notification system that
everyone who has a smartphone is subscribed to.

You probably have a phone that can accept MMS, and a corresponding phone
number.

Lets say I turn this into some kind of guard dog system (bear with me).
Imagine someone wanders onto my property. I'd rather get a text/mms than an
email which might get lost in my inbox.

Individual systems might be great at specific things (motion detection,
security systems, etc.).

Dogs are living beings, they can be trained by average humans to do new things
that your typical security system never imagined.

~~~
Theodores
> " I'd rather get a text/mms than an email which might get lost in my inbox."

That is what I thought. But actually, in practice, once one has moved from
some old Nokia brick to a modern smartphone, the assumption is wrong. SMS has
its place for sending someone a quick text but it is going the way of FAX, to
be only used in some arcane circumstances.

With SMS the delivery was not as good as email. As mentioned, there is
perfectly good wifi where I live but marginal phone signal. In theory I could
find some remote mountain where there is only 2G but even then emails get
delivered at least in header form.

The other thing is that when I had my SMS notifications I had to buy credits
in advance. If the monitored sites were completely down and notifications were
being sent to three people then those credits could run out quickly. So there
was that unnecessary dependency on a third party service that had some credits
to pay for in order for it to work. Totally non-strategic!

If we think of the dog and the selfies, say the dog just happens to tap the
button every few seconds. That could be expensive with SMS but free on email.

You can also build some backup into the email approach, you can cc your
private email as well as email your work one. There is none of the 140
character message length nonsense either.

Plus, who doesn't check their phone every 6 minutes or so?

To be slightly unfair, TFA is marketing spam. Even the box is over-engineered,
you can get wifi PTZ cameras for small change on eBay and a few of them have
an input for a switch so you can take 'selfies' with them, no wheel
reinvention needed.

------
dreamweapon
Is there any evidence the Dog is actually aware that he's "texting (or
otherwise sending) a selfie" \-- or even knows what a selfie _is_ \-- in any
meaningful sense?

"How I taught my dog to thwack his paw on a big red button in response to a
keyword signal" might be a better title.

~~~
smt88
Does it matter? It's funny/cool whether or not the dog understands what a
selfie is.

~~~
anon4
Parent has a point. If you can teach your dog that the button is a way to
communicate with you when you're out of the house, that would be awesome. I
suppose something like having a few signs it can hold when pressing the
button, maybe? Training that would be incredibly hard, I'm guessing, but if
possible, it would be amazing.

~~~
gregorymichael
Great idea. My original plan envisioned something like:

    
    
      - I text into her number while out of the house
      - Twilio sends HTTP request to Arduino 
      - Piezo buzzer sounds 
      - Kaira has to hold the button for X seconds
      - Servo rotates auto treat dispenser
    

In the end, simplicity won out. That said, those are far from insurmountable
challenges.

~~~
pacaro
A friend of mine (Hi Erick!) is working on
[http://puppod.com/](http://puppod.com/)

