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Chasing Cats

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Re: Chasing Cats

#71

Post by monorailz »

RickS wrote: post #19

This is great. There's a project that's the inverse as well: http://www.quantumpicture.com/Flo_Control/flo_control.htm A door that only lets cats in, based on image recognition. As an aside, I've really enjoyed the particle photon so far. It was a little wonky at first when they didn't have persistent storage of state changes, but now that's up and running, it's flawless. It runs the lights in my house (via a relay j…

The archive.org capture linked elsewhere ITT has more details, including more pictures and a couple of videos.

https://web.archive.org/web/20010405175311/http://quantumpic...

Re: Chasing Cats

#72

Post by Motomorgen »

simmons wrote: post #62
byuu wrote: post #37

I definitely want this system! But instead of cats, I want it to detect Fedex and UPS delivery drivers. And instead of turning on the sprinklers, I want it to ring my doorbell so that I know there's a package sitting on my front porch.

I need that, too! (Why can't FedEx be bothered to ring the doorbell?) I sometimes wonder if instead of video, it might be easier to do audio analysis to detect the sound of the UPS truck, which tends to be rather unique in my neighborhood.

Turns out my dog is a finely tuned audio analysis system capable of detecting UPS, USPS and Fedex vehicles within a half mile range.

Re: Chasing Cats

#74

Post by fao_ »

chrissnell wrote: post #65
6502nerdface wrote: post #43

I remember back when Slashdot was cool (i.e., 2002), there was a post [0] about a guy who built [1] a cat-door with attached camera and software that could detect whether the cat was carrying something in its mouth, and only allow the cat to enter the house if not. [0] http://slashdot.org/story/24258 [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20010405175311/http://quantumpic...

Let's not forget another back-in-the-old-days Slashdot favorite, the Bender Defender! The guy that built a cat motion detector in Linux and used it to trigger a blender and strobe lights! http://www.plasma2002.com/blenderdefender/

It's probably easier to find something smelly the cat hates (Like a vapour rub), and place that where you don't want the cat to go.

Re: Chasing Cats

#75

Post by omegaham »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #54
developer2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chances are the cats are digging in his yard/garden/flower bed and leaving feces everywhere, or leaving dead animals in his yard. Outdoor cats are destructive pests; it should be illegal to allow pet cats to roam freely outdoors. If you think it's "natural" and your cats should be free to roam, then you simply should not own cats. Your cat is not just "visiting neighbours". It is destroying other people's yards and k…

Right on with your view of the birds with clipped wings but your cat view...I mean, did you have a bad experience or something? I've known quite a lot of people (especially farmers) who keep outdoor cats and they rarely destroy anything beyond killing some pests. In fact outdoor cats are HUGELY valuable for farms because of pest control. Some animals will become pests no matter what but I've never met someone with su…

Agreed - the problems I've always had with cats have been the feral ones, not the fatass neutered neighborhood cats.

Re: Chasing Cats

#76

Post by TeMPOraL »

emeraldd wrote: post #9
aab0 wrote: post #7

How necessary is the deep model there? It seems like a simple motion detector would work just as well since he doesn't mention using the lawn himself.

Looks like there is a sidewalk through the lawn. Which probably means using a motion detector would force him to sacrifice using the front door.

If you create any kind of safe path in such a system, the cat will learn it quickly too.

One simpler way to go IMO would be to put the system at ground level and use two motion detectors, one aimed specifically to "see" only things that are a meter or more above the ground. Humans would trigger both, but the cat would only trigger the one aimed at the ground.

Re: Chasing Cats

#77

Post by TeMPOraL »

CaptSpify wrote: post #53
rconti wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only guess is crawling on cars and leaving little paw-prints, that's the only common thing I can think of. Occasionally known for getting up under the hood or something, which doesn't turn out so well for the cat, either. Though I'm sure individual cats could have their own undesirable quirks. With dogs, you get the pooping (which is at least half an owner problem), squirrels dig up my yard, gophers same, ants all ov…

Cats poop too! And flower gardens are some of their favorite spots, because the dirt is so easy to kick back up.

Also my cats like to bite on flowers. Don't know why, they just do.

Re: Chasing Cats

#78

Post by rashkov »

jc4p wrote: post #64
rashkov wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're excitement is definitely contagious! I'm always wondering what people do with these things though? What kind of projects? Just getting started with electronics myself and not quite sure what to make of microcontrollers yet.

Thank you for the kind words, reading your message made me smile :) I think the most interesting and quickest to explain thing I've done with these chips (the ESP8266) was a chain of temperature/humidity sensors packed in my office building. I only ended up building out a couple (soldering by hand on prototype boards) but I used a ESP8266 + 1200mAh battery pack + DHT22 sensors to make small modules we could put in di…

That's a great hack and some wonderful advice for having the tools at hand. Thanks!!

Re: Chasing Cats

#79

Post by jerf »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #76
emeraldd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like there is a sidewalk through the lawn. Which probably means using a motion detector would force him to sacrifice using the front door.

If you create any kind of safe path in such a system, the cat will learn it quickly too. One simpler way to go IMO would be to put the system at ground level and use two motion detectors, one aimed specifically to "see" only things that are a meter or more above the ground. Humans would trigger both, but the cat would only trigger the one aimed at the ground.

See, the advantage with that plan is that even if the cats figure out how to bypass that system, now you can assuage the pain of failure by filming the cats leaping across your yard like pogo sticks and monetize the video on YouTube. Tens of millions of views guaranteed.

Re: Chasing Cats

#80

Post by msthomaa »

jc4p wrote: post #64
rashkov wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're excitement is definitely contagious! I'm always wondering what people do with these things though? What kind of projects? Just getting started with electronics myself and not quite sure what to make of microcontrollers yet.

Thank you for the kind words, reading your message made me smile :) I think the most interesting and quickest to explain thing I've done with these chips (the ESP8266) was a chain of temperature/humidity sensors packed in my office building. I only ended up building out a couple (soldering by hand on prototype boards) but I used a ESP8266 + 1200mAh battery pack + DHT22 sensors to make small modules we could put in di…

How much time does ESP8266 plus sensor run before running out?
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