Leaving pets home alone all day is difficult. You have to deal with the guilt of abandoning them when they give you a doe-eyed look just as you’re about to leave, and you think about them throughout the day, hoping they’re snuggled up enjoying the afternoon.
With advancements in connected home technology, it’s now possible to peek in on your home—and your pets—to check on things. But a company called Petcube wants to go even further and let you actually interact with your pet as if you were right there with them.
Petcube’s connected home camera system not only has a wide-angle lens and a two-way speaker to check on pets while away from home, but it also features a laser pointer that you can control remotely from a smartphone. You can make your cat chase the tricky laser throughout the living room even when you’re 1,000 miles away.
After you connect the four-inch cube to your home Wi-Fi, you can activate the laser pointer by simply tapping your phone screen. A red dot will appear, which you can move across the screen. The iOS application is available now; an Android version is coming soon.
Petcube lets you share the controls with your friends or allow the public to access the laser pointer for a specific period of time. If you don’t have your own pet, public streams are available on the Petcube iOS app for people to play with.
The Daily Dot tested Petcube at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Monday. A Petcube device was set up at the Hopalong Rescue in Oakland, Calif., where a group of cats chased the laser wherever we directed it on the screen.
Of course, it’s not for all pets. Only dogs and cats that enjoy laser toys should play with the Petcube—and owners should be careful not to shine the light directly in the pet’s eyes.
Photo via Wolfgang Lonien/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)