Posts Tagged ‘cat door’



Twitter Hack – How to Make an RFID Cat Tracker!

April 11th, 2009

Couple days ago, we saw the cat-tracking Tweeting Cat Door that will let you know when your cat has left the house. (and came back)  Now, we found something even better than that, an RFID cat tracker that will let you track the cat when he/she is within certain boundaries of RFID signals, a much better solution for those of you who either don’t have a cat door or simply want to track your cat within a specified area.

This gadget is called CATaLOG, cat tracking/logging system based on Arduino, RS232 RFID module, and Arduino Ethernet Shield.

rfid-twitter

The author Pete has open sourced the code so if you got some soldering skills, just get the parts, simply put it together, load the code, and you should be set to go so you can track your cat via twitter.  (You can see an example of the device working @BobbinAndTuffin.

bobbin

(screenshot of @BobbinAndTuffin)

The CATaLOG project aims to track our two cats Bobbin and Tuffin as they go in and out of the house so we can see which cat spends more time outside, what their favourite time to go out is, and also get sent SMS messages if a cat goes missing for a certain amount of time.

Great job Pete and make sure to let us know on any future Twitter Hacks via @TweetHacking.

CATaLOG Homepage

via hackedgadgets

Twitter Hack – How to Make a Tweeting Cat Door!

April 8th, 2009

More and more hackers and engineers are learning the value of  Twitter’s microblogging platform and this Tweeting Cat Door is another such great feat that will update you the status of your cat door.  Whether your cat is leaving town or coming home with his/her friends, you will be sure to be tweeted if they go through the cat door.

cat-door

cat-door-2

Here’s a screenshot of the updates on the Tweeting Cat Door, you can follow @GusAndPenny.

Each cat has a small RFID tag on the collar. When a cat is in the close proximity of the door, a small RFID reader reads the tag and if the cat is authorized, a servo will unlock the cat door. The RFID reader and the servo controller are connected to an old laptop. The software on the laptop is written in Delphi and for each “cat door event” is sending a Twitter message and a picture to twitter.com

via diy blog