Cavallo has just partnered up with another company to make hoof boots with monitors. I just saw the announcement recently with photos of the boots. I think they’re either now available or will be shortly.
I suspect bell boots would have too much independent motion to give valuable data on many useful metrics.
First - I’d like to commend you on taking all of the feedback in a constructive manner. I know sometimes tone doesn’t convey well (or at all) but we are all just trying to help. It’s great to hear you are thinking on your feet!
Okay back to the constructive criticism. For a boot or pastern band (if targeted to your average horse owner): will it have a warranty or replacement parts available? If a bell boot, I can’t imagine doing it as a pull on so it would be Velcro which IME are notoriously flimsy. For either pastern bands or bell boots, how will you mitigate damage from overreach, tripping, hitting poles (cavaletti or jumps)? Would a pair or a set of 4 be needed? Set of 4 means more money up front and lots of horses don’t wear hind boots regularly. Would it be something to only be worn during riding? If yes, that means the rider has to put them on and take them off each time just adding another layer to things.
If targeting vet environments as another poster mentioned, be aware there are a few vet grade systems that are already semi regularly used such as the Lameness Locator and a hoof one I can’t remember the name of. Both very cool, both seem to collect the data you may be targeting. If you went this route, what will differentiate your product over the existing systems? Switching costs are a barrier for a lot of things (especially expensive diagnostic equipment and software) so your product would need to be very attractive to appeal to practices that already have a similar device.
Slightly off topic but try to really narrow down what the goal of your product is. You mention lameness prevention - how will your product prevent horses from going lame? I’d be very hesitant to market any product as preventing lameness as it’s difficult (impossible?) to truly prevent lameness due to all of the many, many factors that can go into a lameness event.
There’s also this gait analysis device available to the average horse owner.
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