The Maverick 1
The Maverick 1 clips onto the collar your dog already wears. It shows you where your dog is in real time and keeps track of activity and sleep. The battery lasts 6 to 24 months depending on use.
Open your phone and see your dog on a live map. The Maverick 1 reports real time location whether your dog is asleep on the porch or three fields away, and it keeps reporting far past the point where phone-based tags lose track. The tracking service is $5 a month with no annual contract.
Many GPS dog trackers go dead within days or a few weeks, and a dead tracker can't help you find a dog that slipped out. Years of work on low power design went into the Maverick 1, so the battery lasts anywhere from 6 to 24 months depending on how it is used.
Beyond location, the Maverick 1 keeps a record of your dog's activity and sleep schedule. You see when the afternoon zoomies happened, whether the walk was long enough, and whether last night's sleep looked normal. Changes in a dog's routine are often the first sign something is off.
If your dog gets out, turn on emergency mode. The Maverick 1 flashes a bright LED, so a runaway dog is easier to spot in the dark and easier to pick out at a distance while you follow the live map to them.
The rest of this page leaves out the technical terms. This section covers the engineering inside the Maverick 1 for anyone who wants the details.
A dedicated GPS receiver reports your dog's actual coordinates. The Maverick 1 does not guess the position from someone else's passing phone.
LoRaWAN is a low power radio protocol that can carry a location report for miles on a tiny amount of energy. It is how the tracker stays in touch far beyond WiFi and Bluetooth range.
When your dog is home, the tracker switches to the closest, cheapest link instead of long range radio. That choice is a big part of why the battery lasts as long as it does.
The hardware and firmware are designed and written in-house and tuned for long battery life in a device small enough to ride on a collar.
The Maverick 1 is built on an in-house sensor platform that pairs long range LoRaWAN radio with very low power hardware and firmware we write ourselves. It can carry readings from equipment that sits far from power and cell coverage.
Soil moisture, soil temperature and field conditions reported from the middle of a field. One gateway at the barn covers the acreage around it, and the nodes can run through a full growing season.
Nodes along a ridge or a property line watch for sudden jumps in temperature and CO2 and raise an alert while the fire is still small.
The same hardware that finds a dog finds a herd. Track cattle across open range for months at a time without pulling the collars off for service.
Automated meter reads sent over long range radio. A utility stops paying someone to walk the route and gets a reading from the whole service area on a schedule.
Lights that dim on a schedule and report their own outages, so a city knows which pole needs a truck before a resident calls it in.
A sensor in the container reports how full it is. Routes get driven against real fill data instead of a fixed calendar, and the half empty stops get skipped.
Location and temperature logged together for the length of the trip, so you can tell on arrival whether a shipment warmed up in transit.
Vibration signatures from motors, pumps and conveyors, watched for the drift that tends to show up well before a bearing fails.
A sensor at the end of a long driveway, on a gate, or at a back fence that reaches the house on its own. It doesn't need WiFi at the far end or a trench back to the house.
A sensor on the box out at the road reports when the door opens, so you know the mail has arrived before you walk down the driveway.
A sensor watches a crawlspace, a vacation house or an irrigation line that nobody visits often, and reports as soon as it detects water.
Water wells, cisterns and propane tanks that report their own level from wherever they sit, with no power run and no data line trenched out to them.
Working on one of these? Write to maverick@mkn.us.
From the founder
“The Maverick 1 came out of years of R&D in long range RF over LoRaWAN and extreme low power design. I wrote and designed the hardware and the firmware personally. None of it was outsourced, and it is designed in America.”
The Maverick 1 next to four popular dog trackers and tags, on price, battery life and features.
| Maverick 1 | Fi Series 3+ | Apple AirTag | Tractive | Halo Collar 4 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hardware | $99 | $189 with first year | $29 | about $60 | from $449 |
| Service | $5 / month | about $15 / month, prepaid | none | $5 to $10 / month | from $9.99 / month |
| Battery life | 6 to 24 months | 1 to 3 months | about 1 year, coin cell | up to 14 days | about 30 hours |
| Real time location | Yes | Yes | No, nearby iPhones only | Yes | Yes |
| LoRaWAN long range radio | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| WiFi & Bluetooth | Yes | Yes | Bluetooth only | Bluetooth only | Yes |
| Activity & sleep | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Emergency LED beacon | Yes | Yes | No, sound only | Yes | No |
Competitor pricing and battery figures come from manufacturer materials and published reviews as of July 2026 and can change. Check each maker's site for current details.
One collar addon tracker with real time location, activity and sleep tracking, and an emergency mode with a flashing LED. The battery lasts 6 to 24 months.
Location tracking service, billed monthly with no annual contract. Turn it off when you do not need it and the hardware is still yours.
Reserve yours