I just imagined reading your comment from the perspective of a layman 20 or 30 years ago. It's amazing how far we've come as a species!

that's hopelessly optimistic. so dogs can send texts. so what? we still clamor for power and ignore the consequences of our actions at every level and in every facet of life. we are hopelessly animalistic and primal in our social and environmental dealings, which is not offset by technological advances which often amplify our shortcomings.

We can appreciate that one of us was patient enough to set those burning desires for power aside and allow his dog to communicate that he misses him, and he has to take a poop.

of course we can. i thought it was funny.

Mmm, I think you were at least kinda serious

i legitimately thought the dog sending too many texts was funny and the project was cool. i was serious in disagreeing with our species coming so far.

What if it scanned your local network for one of your MAC addresses or use something like avahi to find your devices to check whether you're home before sending a text or notification?

It actually does this using MAC addresses. :-) It says "Where are you?" if not I'm not home and "We need to go outside" if I am home.

How did your dogs figure out that a button gets your attention? Did you have to train them in some way?

Also, I am wondering how dogs know when to expect you back. Is their sense of time that accurate and they can easily realize that 9-ish hours passed?

It started with a small bell on a hook next to the door and I would take their paw and hit the bell before letting them outside. Eventually they caught on and I'd give them a lot of praise when they did it on their own. The next iteration was an analog setup and the latest uses a Raspberry Pi. I will say, I have three dogs and only one (the smartest) ever caught on with the bell and analog version. Two of them are able to use the newest version which is the easiest to trigger, since it has a touch surface that is 4x4 inches. The third dog has never caught on. But, he hates going outside, so it's likely he doesn't want to catch on.

I'm not exactly sure how they know when to expect me home, but they seem to have a decent sense of time or are sensitive enough to external triggers that condition them, like neighbors arriving home after work, rush hour traffic, etc.

They do exhibit certain behaviors when it's feeding time (hasn't been automated yet), which is the same every night and that is consistent through daylight savings changes and day lengths varying with seasons. So I assume they have some rudimentary sense of time.