Rodents, including mice, are problematic. They can cause significant damage to your home by chewing up wires, walls, and insulation, while leaving behind unsanitary droppings that present a health hazard. But those of us who love animals are reluctant to utilize traditional mousetraps. Not only are those fatal, but they can also cause a lot of suffering along the way. That’s why Trapsticles built this rodent-friendly catch-and-release mousetrap.
This mousetrap doesn’t kill rodents or harm them at all. It simply traps them in a large box, so the homeowner can relocate them. To keep a mouse from just coming back, it is necessary to release them far away. But that’s a lot better than killing them. It may also be possible to donate the captured mice to pet stores to use as feeders. That is still a little gruesome, but nature is like that.
The concept here is simple: it is a big box and the top is a trap door actuated by a servo motor. Bait (like peanut butter) lures mice onto the trap door, which then swings down to drop the critter inside. The door then closes so the mouse can’t escape — though one wily rodent was able to climb out of Trapsticles’s trap.
An Arduino Nano board controls the servo. It detects the presence of a mouse (or any small warmblooded creature) using a PIR sensor. Blinder-style shields prevent the PIR sensor from spotting anything that isn’t on the trap door, so a passing person doesn’t set it off.
As you can see in the video, this works well and is much more humane than the traps at your local hardware store.
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