Schlagwort: pet

  • Using Smart Home Tech to Care for Your Pets

    Using Smart Home Tech to Care for Your Pets

    Reading Time: 5 minutes
    Using Smart Home Tech to Care for Your Pets

    Smart home technology has a ton of useful and fascinating use cases for humans, but what about our pets? For most of us, our furry friends are members of the family, and if we can make modifications to our home to help them, we do it.

    The good news here is that there are tons of home automation tools that you can use to make life easier and more fun for your pets, and many of them can be done with just a handful of starting materials and basic knowledge.

    In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the ways smart homes can benefit pets, and explore some projects from the Arduino community.

    Here are just a few of the ways smart home technology can improve your pets’ quality of life:

    • Control the temperature through tools like automatic sensors and heating systems, ensuring the room is perfect for pets even when you’re not around
    • Observe pets when you’re away, allowing you to quickly notice if they’re distressed or in trouble (or making trouble)
    • Keeping your pets fed by automatically filling their bowls at the right times
    • Keeping your pets entertained with robotic toys and activities
    • Prevent theft with monitoring and tracking tools, alongside existing smart home security systems

    Some examples of smart home pet tech

    Now let’s take a look at some projects from the Arduino community geared toward making life easier for pets.

    Remote pet feeder

    Community member Amal Mathew designed this project to make it possible to feed pets using a remote control. It’s pretty simple to get started — all you need is an Arduino Uno board (or similar), a plastic bottle, a servo motor, a TV remote, IR receiver (TS0P1738) and a small piece of cardboard.

    With just a few clicks of the remote, you can instruct the plastic bottle of food to release a certain amount to be enjoyed by your pet — without even leaving the sofa. Check out the full project here.

    Pet entertainment centre

    Vítor Barbosa was inspired by the Alexa and Arduino Smart Home challenge to build the pet entertainment centre along with two friends. As well as feeding pets, it also keeps them entertained with the use of a laser toy — although this is better suited to cats than dogs.

    Every pet owner knows how useful it is to have a toy to keep your pets distracted when you need to focus on something else, and Vitor’s project uses smart home technology to build the perfect automated solution. 

    Pet feeder with 3D printed parts

    Before COVID-19, russo08 was working long, unpredictable hours and often ended up getting home late due to flooding and other disruptions. This made it tricky to feed his dog on time every day.

    To ensure his pet was fed at the right times every day, russo08 decided to build an automated solution. He used an Arduino microcontroller and a handful of other components — including 3D printed parts — to build a custom dog feeder. Because of random power outages in the area, it was essential that the feeder had a solution for power outage recovery and food getting stuck in the dispensing mechanism. 

    Here’s the full list of features on russo08’s feeder:

    • Two feedings per day
    • Accurate timekeeping with real-time clock
    • Manual time change of real-time clock
    • Manual feeding option
    • LED indication of hall sensor and real-time clock failure
    • Overview of feed times, current time, and feeding completions on the main screen
    • Easy to navigate menu
    • Power outage feeding resume (will feed when the power comes back on)
    • Feeding times and completions are safely stored in EEPROM
    • Servo “jiggle” in the event of food getting stuck while dispensing

    Improve your pet’s life with Arduino

    Arduino’s solutions make it easier than ever to build your own smart home projects with relatively few starting materials and without the need to be a seasoned expert. Our community is filled with examples of DIY home automation projects that improved our makers’ lives in all kinds of ways.

    When it comes to pets, Arduino’s technology can be used to build smart solutions like the ones in this article, making it easy to feed, water, protect, and care for our pets even when we aren’t physically present.

    Check out this article where we look at how home automation can make it easier to care for your pets. We’ll also share some examples of projects from the Arduino Community, where many members have developed their own devices to keep their pets safe and happy.

    Find out more about how Arduino works and get started with your own projects by checking out the main website.

    Abstract: Caring for pets is one of the most important — if not THE most important — job you do at home. The good news is that technology can help in this area. Home automation can make it easier to feed, entertain, and care for your furry friends — find out some of the ways Arduino can help you do this.

    Social post: Making sure your pets are fed, watered, and entertained can be a demanding job at times, especially when you’re busy with other things. The good news is that technology can shoulder some of the burden by automating some important pet care tasks.

    Website: LINK

  • Motion-controlled water fountain…for cats!

    Motion-controlled water fountain…for cats!

    Reading Time: 2 minutes

    Tired of the constant trickle of your cat’s water fountain? Set up motion detection and put your cat in control.


    Cats are fickle

    My cat, Jimmy, loves drinking from running water. Or from the sink. Or from whatever glass I am currently using. Basically, my cat loves drinking out of anything that isn’t his water bowl…because like all cats, he’s fickle and lives to cause his humans as much aggravation as possible.

    Here’s a photo of my gorgeous boy, because what cat owner doesn’t like showing off their cat at the slightest opportunity?

    Jimmy’s getting better now, thanks to the introduction of a pet water fountain in the kitchen, and we’ve somehow tricked him into using it — but what I don’t like is how the constant trickle of water makes me want to pee all the time.

    Thankfully, this motion-controlled water foundation from Hackster.io maker vladimirm is here to save the day by only turning on the fountain when his cat approached it.

    Motion-controlled pet water foundation

    So how does it work? Vladimir explains:

    When the PIR sensor detects movement, it sends a message to the radio dongle plugged to the Raspberry Pi, which sends the message to the MQTT server. On the other side, the MQTT message is processed by the Home Assistant, which then, using the automation, triggers the smart plug and starts the configured countdown.

    The build uses an old Raspberry Pi 1 Model B, and a BigClown Motion Detector Kit, alongside a TP-Link smart plug and an open-source Home Assistant. The Home Assistant smartphone app documents when the smart plug is activated, and for how long, which also means you can track when your pet is drinking and check they’re getting enough water.

    Vladimir goes into far more detail in the project tutorial. Now go help your cat stay hydrated!

    Website: LINK

  • This IoT Pet Monitor barks back

    This IoT Pet Monitor barks back

    Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Jennifer Fox, founder of FoxBot Industries, uses a Raspberry Pi pet monitor to check the sound levels of her home while she is out, allowing her to keep track of when her dog Marley gets noisy or agitated, and to interact with the gorgeous furball accordingly.

    Bark Back Project Demo

    A quick overview and demo of the Bark Back, a project to monitor and interact with Check out the full tutorial here: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/bark-back-interactive-pet-monitor For any licensing requests please contact licensing@break.com

    Marley, bark!

    Using a Raspberry Pi 3, speakers, SparkFun’s MEMS microphone breakout board, and an analogue-to-digital converter (ADC), the IoT Pet Monitor is fairly easy to recreate, all thanks to Jennifer’s full tutorial on the FoxBot website.

    Building the pet monitor

    In a nutshell, once the Raspberry Pi and the appropriate bits and pieces are set up, you’ll need to sign up at CloudMQTT — it’s free if you select the Cute Cat account. CloudMQTT will create an invisible bridge between your home and wherever you are that isn’t home, so that you can check in on your pet monitor.

    Screenshot CloudMQTT account set-up — IoT Pet Monitor Bark Back Raspberry Pi

    Image c/o FoxBot Industries

    Within the project code, you’ll be able to calculate the peak-to-peak amplitude of sound the microphone picks up. Then you can decide how noisy is too noisy when it comes to the occasional whine and bark of your beloved pup.

    MEMS microphone breakout board — IoT Pet Monitor Bark Back Raspberry Pi

    The MEMS microphone breakout board collects sound data and relays it back to the Raspberry Pi via the ADC.
    Image c/o FoxBot Industries

    Next you can import sounds to a preset song list that will be played back when the volume rises above your predefined threshold. As Jennifer states in the tutorial, the sounds can easily be recorded via apps such as Garageband, or even on your mobile phone.

    Using the pet monitor

    Whenever the Bark Back IoT Pet Monitor is triggered to play back audio, this information is fed to the CloudMQTT service, allowing you to see if anything is going on back home.

    A sitting dog with a doll in its mouth — IoT Pet Monitor Bark Back Raspberry Pi

    *incoherent coos of affection from Alex*
    Image c/o FoxBot Industries

    And as Jennifer recommends, a update of the project could include a camera or sensors to feed back more information about your home environment.

    If you’ve created something similar, be sure to let us know in the comments. And if you haven’t, but you’re now planning to build your own IoT pet monitor, be sure to let us know in the comments. And if you don’t have a pet but just want to say hi…that’s right, be sure to let us know in the comments.

    Website: LINK

  • IKEA Offers an Entire Line of Pet Furniture

    IKEA Offers an Entire Line of Pet Furniture

    Reading Time: < 1 minute

    IKEA offers computer desks, television stands, and now, an entire line of pet furniture. It’s called the „Lurvig“ collection, and for those wondering, the word means hairy is Swedish.

    The lineup includes dog beds, pet carriers, couch covers, cat tunnels, and even scratching posts.

    You’ll be able to find the pieces now at stores in the US, Canada, France and Japan. Other locations around the world can expect it around March 2018.