The Disco Dog LED vest will flash "LOST DOG" if an animal strays too far.
You wouldn’t take your dog to a disco if you’ve got any concern for their welfare, but how about bringing the disco to your dog?
That’s the goal of the Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for Disco Dog, a “smartphone-controlled LED dog vest” created by design agency Party, which is seeking $15k of funding to develop the product.
Yes, on one level this is a novelty product designed for internet virality. “It displays a variety of animated patterns and custom scrolling text in thousands of colours,” explains the Kickstarter pitch.
“You can choose an animation or type in a message using our Disco Dog application on your smartphone. It’s a fun way to celebrate your dog, and also keeps her visible and safe when it’s dark out.”
That hints at the more serious side of Disco Dog: if its connection to the owner’s smartphone drops because their pet has strayed too far, the display will switch to a “LOST DOG” message to alert passers by.
Party is planning to make an initial run of 80 vests, most of which will be sold to backers on Kickstarter – although they’ll have to pay $300 for a small-dog version, $350 for medium-sized dogs, and $400 for large dogs.
(Note: you can get a decent non-LED non-smartphone-controlled high-visibility dog vest for less than a tenner, and handle the lost dog side of things via the low-tech medium of “shouting”.)
Even so, with nearly $5.6k of pledges with 26 days to go in its campaign, and a shout-out from Kickstarter in its weekly community email as a product to check out, Disco Dog looks likely to hit its relatively modest funding target.
With a projected shipping date of November 2015, expect to see four-legged models sporting the vests on the streets – if not the discos – of Williamsburg and Shoreditch by Christmas.