Frequently Asked Questions
The questions we get asked most.
Onimo in short
Onimo is a finder for the things you do not want to lose, starting with cats. It is made of two parts: the Onimo S, a small device that attaches to the collar, and the Onimo F, the Finder, a unit that plugs in at home and does the actual finding. You use them through the Onimo app.
A tracker assumes you want to know where something is all the time. It measures its position continuously and sends it on, which costs battery, needs a permanent connection, and quietly builds a record of where your animal goes. A finder assumes you only need to know in the one moment that matters: when your cat is not home and should be. Onimo is built for that moment, and sleeps the rest of the time.
A cat that goes missing is usually still close to home, which is exactly the range a household Finder covers. That makes cats the case where the system is strongest from the very first unit, before any network exists around it.
Yes. The Finder is not an optional extra: without one, there is nothing for the Onimo S to talk to. One Finder serves the household and works with several Onimo S devices, so a second or third cat does not need a second Finder.
Onimo is engineered in the EU. Onimo B.V. is a Dutch company, based in Amsterdam.
How it works
In three stages. First a rough position on the map: from satellite positioning where there is enough open sky for it, and from the wifi networks the device can see where there is not. That is enough to tell you which direction to walk. Then signal strength over long-range radio for the middle distance, warmer and colder as you move. Then Bluetooth for the last few metres, where you are close enough that the device can point you at the right corner of the shed.
Over long-range radio in the 868 MHz band, the same kind of radio used for sensors in agriculture and logistics. It travels much further than Bluetooth, and it gets through walls, sheds and hedges far better than the 2.4 GHz signals a phone uses.
Instead of streaming its position, the Onimo S sends a short sign of life at an interval you set. Each heartbeat tells the system the device is alive and roughly where it is. It is the reason the battery lasts as long as it does, and the reason there is no continuous trail of your cat’s movements anywhere.
You start Find Mode in the app. The device wakes up, raises its transmit power, reports more often and uses satellite positioning where it can. Because the device is asleep between heartbeats, it can take up to one heartbeat interval before it hears you and answers.
Long-range radio, Bluetooth, a passive scan of nearby wifi network names, satellite positioning, a six-axis motion sensor, a pressure sensor, a buzzer and a light. Most of it stays switched off most of the time. It is there for two jobs: finding your cat when you are searching, and building the territory map.
Satellite positioning is the backup, not the default. It is off during normal use and wakes when a search is running, or when a position is needed for the territory map. A satellite fix is the most expensive thing the device can do with its battery.
Coverage and limits
In a built-up area, expect hundreds of metres from a Finder, not kilometres. The honest number depends on what is between the device and the Finder: an open garden is not a row of brick houses, and a cellar is not a hedge.
Finders listen for each other’s devices. If your cat strays past another Onimo household, that household’s Finder picks up the signal and the position appears on your map, and nowhere else. The people whose Finder helped never see a thing.
Then your coverage is your own Finder’s coverage, which for a cat that stays near home is usually enough. Every Finder added to a neighbourhood makes it denser for everyone in it, so coverage grows as Onimo grows.
That is exactly the case Onimo is built for, and it is where a GPS tracker or a Bluetooth tag typically goes quiet. Long-range radio gets through walls far better, though no radio gets through everything: a steel container or a deep concrete cellar will beat any of them.
Onimo needs a Finder in range: it is not a cellular tracker, so without one there is nothing to receive the signal.
Battery and charging
Weeks to months, depending on how often you let it report in. That is what the calculations say. Field tests have to confirm it before we put a single hard number on it, and we would rather say that out loud than promise a number we cannot stand behind.
Mostly how often the device reports in, and you choose that: one, two or five minutes. It also sets your worst case when you start a search. An Onimo S within reach of a Finder answers within one interval, so at the longest setting you wait at most five minutes, and less on the other two.
The Onimo S charges on a magnetic contact charger. There is no socket and no flap on the device itself, which is what allows it to be sealed against water.
It is built to IP68, the rating for permanent immersion. The only opening in the whole device is an acoustic membrane that lets the sound out, and that membrane seals against water and dust.
The Finder and the network
The app helps you find a good spot in your home, and higher is better. The Finder needs two things: an internet connection, and good long-range reception where it stands. Getting that one spot right is what makes the whole system work without a mobile subscription inside every device, which is what a GPS tracker needs.
Yes, by wifi or by network cable, and it works together with the app. It is the bridge between the radio your cat carries and your phone.
No. You plug the Finder in and scan its QR code in the app. The app connects to it over Bluetooth and hands it your wifi details, so you never type a network key into a strange screen. The Onimo S pairs the same way. No accounts to create anywhere else, no keys to copy over.
Yes. Your Finder relays signals from other people’s devices to their owners, exactly as their Finders do for you. For a cat it is rarely needed, because cats stay close to home, but it is there for the times it is not. You never see their animals, their positions or their accounts, and they never see yours.
No. A Finder can pass a signal along, but it cannot send anything back to a device that is not part of its own household. That is enforced in the network, not left to good behaviour.
The Finder uses your internet connection, for very small amounts of data. The Onimo S never joins a wifi network at all. What it does is note which network names are within earshot, and that turns out to be useful. While the territory map is built and kept up to date, each position is stored together with the network names that were visible there. So when your cat is somewhere a satellite signal cannot reach, but those same networks are visible, that is enough to know roughly where it is.
Privacy
Only you. The history belongs to the Onimo in your app, and that is enforced in the backend, not just in the app. How much history is kept is your own setting on the territory map: the map needs some history to work, and you decide how much of it is kept.
No. Never personal data, not now and not at a better offer. What may happen is that aggregated figures are shared, figures from which no single household or Onimo can be picked out, and only under the rules published at onimo.org before anything is shared at all.
It is built so that it does not do that well. The device sleeps between heartbeats instead of streaming, satellite positioning is off unless a search is running, and Find Mode is deliberately limited rather than something you can leave switched on. Stopping misuse is a job in its own right, not an afterthought: we are building checks that read the movement pattern to tell whether a device is really on a cat, and stop it working if it is not.
Everything about how the data is handled, and where the promise stops, is at onimo.org. The privacy policy for this website is here on onimo.com.
Because it is the tagline, not the small print. Private. Always. What that means in practice, and where the promise stops, is written out at onimo.org as commitments you can hold us to. If one of them cannot be built, the claim goes, not the other way round.
Your cat, in practice
36 x 26 x 10 mm. About the size of a large postage stamp, and a centimetre thick.
To the collar. It uses spring bars on a band, the same principle as a watch strap.
No. Collar bands are sold separately.
It is designed not to be noticed: small, light, sealed, with no dangling parts. It is an accessory rather than a gadget, and that is deliberate.
Four: Matte Black Stealth, Champagne Gold, Silver Ceramic and Rose Bronze. The front panel can be covered with a sticker, and the LED light shines through the transparent parts of it.
Personalised stickers are part of the plan.
Yes. There is a buzzer and a light, so once you are close the device can tell you where it is even if you cannot see it.
The app
Yes. There is a demo app that shows how Onimo works using simulated data. It is not connected to real devices and nothing you enter in it leaves your phone.
iPhone and Android.
Yes. You can set up a household, so everyone at home sees the same thing. The Finder belongs to your address, the people in the house are connected to the Finder, and each Onimo S is connected to a Finder. And with your permission an Onimo S can be connected to someone else’s Finder as well, for as long as you want: a neighbour, a cat sitter, family further away, a boarding cattery.
What it costs
19.99 a year, or 1.99 a month, per cat.
Because the network, the servers, the app and the support do not stop costing money after you buy the hardware.
Buying, delivery and support
Launching in the coming months. Join the waitlist and we will tell you before we open.
To be determined.
Yes, within 14 days of delivery, no questions asked. The full return and refund policy is on this site.
Get in touch and we take it from there. In most cases we can see the fault on the device ourselves, and then a replacement goes out straight away, with a prepaid return envelope in the box for the old one. You do not wait for us to receive anything first. On top of that, everything we sell is covered by the EU legal guarantee of conformity, which is two years at minimum.