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2025 Pet Hacks Challenge : Poopopticon Is All Up In Kitty’s Business

May 29, 2025 by 6 Comments

After seeing this project, we can say that [James] must be a top-tier roommate. He has two flatmates– one human, one feline, and the feline flatmate’s litterbox was located in a bathroom close to the other human’s room. The odors were bothersome. A bad roommate might simply say that wasn’t their problem, but not [James].

Instead, he proclaimed “I shall build a poopopticon to alert me so I may clean the litterbox immediately, before smells can even begin to occur, thus preserving domestic harmony!”* We should all aspire to be more like [James].

It was, admittedly, a fairly simple project. Rather than dive into feline facial recognition, since it only has to detect a single cat, [James] used a simple IR sensor out of his parts bin, the sort you see on line-following robots. The microcontroller, an ESP8266, also came from his parts bin, making this project eligible for the ‘lowest budget’ award, if the contest had one.

The ESP8266 is set to send a message to a waiting webhook. In this case it is linked to a previous project, a smart ‘ring light’ [James] uses to monitor his Twitch chats. He’s also considered hooking it up to his lazy-esp32-banner for a big scrolling ‘change the litterbox!’ message. Since it’s just a webhook, the sky is the limit. Either way, the signal gets to its recipient and the litter gets changed before it smells, ensuring domestic bliss at [James]’ flat. If only all our roommates had been more like [James], we’d be much less misanthropic today.

2025 Hackaday Pet Hacks Contest
  • He did not, in fact, say that.
Fytó pet plant

2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Fytó – Turn Your Plant Into A Pet

May 27, 2025 by 2 Comments

This entry into the 2025 Pet Hacks Contest is about bringing some fun feedback to normally silent plants. Fytó integrates sensors and displays into a 3D printed planter. The sensors read the various environmental and soil conditions that the plant is experiencing, and give you feedback about them via a series of playful expressive faces that are displayed on the screen embedded in the planter.

At the core of the Fytó is a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, which has plenty of power to display the animations while also being small enough to easily fit inside the planter without it growing in size much more than a normal planter would be. The sensors include a capacitive soil moisture sensor, a temperature sensor, and a light-dependent resistor. These sensors all provide analog outputs to relay their measurements and so there was an ADS1115 analog-to-digital converter board also included as the Raspberry Pi doesn’t have the required analog pins to communicate with them.

The fun animated faces are displayed with a 2-inch LCD display embedded in the planter. A small acrylic cover is placed in front of the LCD to help ease the transition from the printed planter to the internally mounted screen. The temperature and light sensors were also placed in openings around the planter to ensure they could get good environmental readings. There are six expressions the Fytó can express based on its sensor readings, ranging from happy when all the readings are in a good zone, to thirsty if it needs water or freezing when it’s too cold. Be sure to check out the other entries in the 2025 Pet Hacks Contest.

Continue reading “2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Fytó – Turn Your Plant Into A Pet” →

2025 Pet Hacks Contest: A Barrel Of Fun For Your Dog

May 26, 2025 by 3 Comments

If you ask someone for a piece of received opinion about Bernese mountain dogs, the chances are that the tale of their carrying barrels of brandy round their necks for the revival of those lost in the snow. It’s a story of uncertain provenance and may indeed be a myth, but that hasn’t stopped [Saren Tasciyan] 3D printing one for their faithful hound. In its own way it too is a saviour, for as well as a small camera, it carries a supply of dog poop bags.

It’s a two part print, held together with strong magnets. Waterproofing is achieved using liberal quantities of hot glue. There’s a protrusion on one side designed to take an action camera for a dog’s-eye-view of the world. The files are downloadable, so your pooch can have one too if you like. We are wondering whether a couple of miniatures of brandy might just fit in there as well.

It’s is part of the 2025 Pet Hacks contest, so if this has whetted your appetite, expect more. If your dog carries around something you’ve made, how about making it an entry of your own?

2025 Hackaday Pet Hacks Contest

2025 Pet Hacks Contest: A Water Fountain For Your Cat

May 25, 2025 by 5 Comments

Part of the charm of having a cat in your life is that by their nature these animals are very interactive. They will tell you in no uncertain terms when something in their lives needs attention, for example when their water dish is empty. But why not give them a drinking fountain all of their own? It’s what [supermarioprof] did for their adorable ginger cat [Piki Piki], providing a cat-operated trickle of water on demand.

It’s a simple enough device in its operation, but very well constructed. There’s a small basin with a drain, and a water cistern valve operated by the cat placing a paw on a lever. This starts a trickle of water, from which they can lap as much as they like.

The physical construction comes courtesy of some laser-cut ply, and what looks like some 3D print work. It’s certainly easy to operate for the cat, and has worked reliably for a few years now.

This project is part of the 2025 Pet Hacks contest, so expect to see more in the same vein. If your cat’s life is improved by one of your projects, consider making an entry yourself!

2025 Hackaday Pet Hacks Contest
Aquassist fish feeder

2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Aquassist Fish Feeder

May 23, 2025 by No comments

This project submitted to the 2025 Pet Hacks Contest brings a bit of IoT to your finned friends. Aquassist is a fish feeder that is primarily 3D printed only requiring a servo and a microcontroller to give you remote control of feeding your fish.

The Aquassist consists of just six 3D-printed parts. At its core is an Archimedes screw, a mechanism that ensures consistent portions of fish food are dispensed into the fish tank. A small hopper on top holds the food, and to minimize the part count, all 3D-printed components are designed to be glued together.

The brains of the operation take place in a Wemos D1 mini, a compact ESP8266 board programed using the Arduino IDE. The feeding mechanism relies on an SG90 continuous rotation servo, which rotates the Archimedes screw to dispense food. Unlike standard servos, this model offers ample torque in a small package and can rotate continuously without hitting an angular limit.

The Aquassist is controlled via a web-based application accessible from any device. The D1 Mini connects to Firebase to check the feeding schedule or detect if the “Feed Now” button has been pressed. Users can set feeding times or trigger an immediate feeding through the app’s intuitive interface. Check out a video below to see the Aquassist in action, and check our our other entries into the 2025 Pet Hacks Contest.

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2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Keep Your Hound Toasty Warm With This Heated Dog Bed

May 23, 2025 by 2 Comments

It’s been a universal trait among the different faithful Hackaday Hounds who have loped around these parts over the decades, that there is no place warm enough for their tastes. Fire up the stove and the dog is there stretched out in front of it, leaving one to wonder whether our house temperature is being cruel to the mutt, or simply that they are heat sponges with infinite capacity. There’s got to be some joy in doggy circles then at the prospect of [John.r.sheahan]’s heated dog bed, designed in particular with the comfort of an older dog in mind.

In electronics terms it’s a relatively low-tech project, using as it does a 12 volt electric lap blanket aimed at motorists. It’s none the less a hack though, because it has a frame made of PVC pipe to hold it, and a blanked clipped in place. This forms a box-like structure above the sleeping position keeping the dog very comfortable indeed over chilly nights. We’ve cared for more than one geriatric dog over the years, and can see that something like this is vital for their comfort and well-being.

This project is part of the 2025 Pet Hacks contest, so look out for more like it. Alternatively if your faithful friend uses something you made, why not enter yourself!

2025 Hackaday Pet Hacks Contest

2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Loko Tracks Fido With LoRa And GPS

May 22, 2025 by 7 Comments

Some projects start as hacks, and end as products — that’s the case for [Akio Sato]’s project Loko, the LoRa/GPS tracker that was entered in our 2025 Pet Hacks Contest. The project dates all the way back to 2019 on Hackaday.io, and through its logs you can see its evolution up to the announcement that Loko is available from SeeedStudio.

It’s not a device necessarily limited to pets. In fact, the original use case appears to have been a backup locator beacon for lost drones. But it’s still a good fit for the contest none-the-less: at 12 grams, the tiny tracking device won’t bother even the most diminutive of pups, and will fit on any collar at only 30 mm x 23 mm. The “ground station” that pairs with your phone is a bit bigger, of course, but unless you have a Newfoundlander or a St. Bernard you’re likely bigger than fido. The devices use LoRa to provide a range up to 15 km — maybe better if you can loop them into a LoRaWAN. Depending on how often you pin the tracker, it can apparently last for as long as 270 days, which we really hope you won’t need to track a missing pet.

The hardware is based around Seeed’s Wio-E5 LoRa chip, which packages an STM32 with a LoRA radio. The firmware is written in MicroPython, and everything is available via GitHub under the MIT license. Though the code for the mobile app that interfaces with that hardware doesn’t appear to be in the repository at the moment. (There are folders, but they’re disappointingly empty.) The apps are available free on the iOS App Store and Google Play, however.

There’s still plenty of time to submit your own hacks to the Pet Hacks Contest, so please do! You have until May 10th, so if you haven’t started yet, it’s not too late to get hacking.

2025 Hackaday Pet Hacks Contest