Critter Geek

Here’s a great one from Instructables: How to make a RFID pet food access control system (this has been blogged in numerous places, including the MAKE:Blog).

I wish it were easier to play with RFID technology. I recently purchased an infrared dog door so Laika can go outside on her own without letting out the cats…but I’m left feeling a little abused by paying so much for something I probably could have made on my own if I had more know-how and ambition.

Unfortunately, though, it looks like RFID implants may be a poor choice for using RFID tech with animals and pets, from this post by Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing:

VeriChip — and other vendors — have been busily implanting radio-frequency ID (RFID) chips in human and animal subjects ever since the FDA approved the process. But a series of studies conducted from 1996-2006 noted a high incidence of dangerous tumors arising at the sites of RFID implants — something the FDA apparently did not consider when it approved the procedure.

Link

The actual stats in the article linked to are really quite surprisingly high….from the Associated Press report by :

Published in veterinary and toxicology journals between 1996 and 2006, the studies found that lab mice and rats injected with microchips sometimes developed subcutaneous “sarcomas” — malignant tumors, most of them encasing the implants.

• A 1998 study in Ridgefield, Conn., of 177 mice reported cancer incidence to be slightly higher than 10 percent — a result the researchers described as “surprising.”

• A 2006 study in France detected tumors in 4.1 percent of 1,260 microchipped mice. This was one of six studies in which the scientists did not set out to find microchip-induced cancer but noticed the growths incidentally. They were testing compounds on behalf of chemical and pharmaceutical companies; but they ruled out the compounds as the tumors’ cause. Because researchers only noted the most obvious tumors, the French study said, “These incidences may therefore slightly underestimate the true occurrence” of cancer.

• In 1997, a study in Germany found cancers in 1 percent of 4,279 chipped mice. The tumors “are clearly due to the implanted microchips,” the authors wrote.

Still, I think it might be interesting to play with RFID legbands or collar tags.