Wired tested the Fi Mini and Tractive cat collars against each other for activity, sleep, and GPS.
I always wonder how much of the “sleep” and “activity” scoring is just collar fit and sensor placement. A loose collar on a fluffy cat can turn normal grooming into “steps” and “awake time” pretty fast.
That collar-fit point is why I mostly treat the sleep/activity graphs as relative trends, not truth. Accelerometers can’t tell “grooming while stationary” from “pacing” unless the algorithms are really tuned per animal.
Yeah the graphs are vibes more than facts — my cat can spend 20 minutes “doing nothing” while actually grooming like it’s a full workout. the only metric i trust on these trackers is whether the location pings are consistent when they slip under a bed or into a hedge.
