Keep Pesky Cats At Bay With A Machine-Learning Turret Gun

July 12, 2019 by Dan Maloney 32 Comments

It doesn’t take long after getting a cat in your life to learn who’s really in charge. Cats do pretty much what they want to do, when they want to do it, and for exactly as long as it suits them. Any correlation with your wants and needs is strictly coincidental, and subject to change without notice, because cats.

[Alvaro Ferrán Cifuentes] almost learned this the hard way, when his cat developed a habit of exploring the countertops in his kitchen and nearly turned on the cooktop while he was away. To modulate this behavior, [Alvaro] built this AI Nerf turret gun. The business end of the system is just a gun mounted on a pan-tilt base made from 3D-printed parts and a pair of hobby servos. A webcam rides atop the gun and feeds into a PC running software that implements the YOLO3 localization algorithm. The program finds the cat, tracks its centroid, and swivels the gun to match it. If the cat stays in the no-go zone above the countertop for three seconds, he gets a dart in his general direction. [Alvaro] found that the noise of the gun tracking him was enough to send the cat scampering, proving that cats are capable of learning as long as it suits them.

We like this build and appreciate any attempt to bring order to the chaos a cat can bring to a household. It also puts us in mind of [Matthias Wandel]’s recent attempt to keep warm in his shop, although his detection algorithm was much simpler.

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In This Aussie’s Back Yard, No Cat Is Safe From An Automated Soaking!

May 14, 2019 by Jenny List 32 Comments

Some of us here at Hackaday are cat lovers, but we also understand that a plethora of unwanted cats using a suburban back garden can be bothersome, and a few years ago we featured a project from Aussie YouTuber [Craig Turner], in which he created a motion-detecting water spray for use as a relatively harmless cat repellent. Now he’s back with an updated version which is a little slicker and easier to make.

At its heart is the same PIR-turns-on-water operation, but this time there is a solenoid valve and purpose-built nozzle instead of a car central locking actuator and a lawn sprayer. Doing the electronic work is an off-the-shelf PIR module, so there is no longer any need to hack a security PIR detector. Add in some pipe sections and PTFE tape with a bit of hot glue, and the result is a far more professional and streamlined device. The video gives a full run-down on construction, though we notice he neglected to emphasise the polarity of his protection diode so keep an eye out if you follow his example.

So if the thought of a continuous supply of free feline company courtesy of your neighbours is not for you then now you are equipped to send them packing. The latest video incarnation of the project is below the break, but if you are in search of the original then you can go back to our coverage at the time.

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Automated Cat Feeder Handles Wet Food With Aplomb

March 22, 2019 by Lewin Day 17 Comments

A feline’s appetite is rarely sated, and cat owners around the world are routinely treated to an early morning wake up call to remind them of this fact. To solve this problem, many turn to automated feeders. However, such devices usually handle only dry foods, with a simple hopper system. [Vikram Hao] instead went above and beyond, building a fully automated wet food cat feeder.

The device is a great example of effective automation. It’s fully capable of dispensing a single can of cat food, as well as opening the can, serving the food and disposing of the waste in an integrated bin. Currently, it has a maximum capacity of 9 cans, though this can be increased by simple alterations to the hopper and trash bin. Unsurprisingly, all manner of steppers, servos and brushed motors work in concert to achieve this feat. An Arduino Mega 2560 serves as the brains, providing plenty of IO to run everything as easily as possible.

[Vikram] reports that both the owner and the cat are overjoyed with the invention. We’ve seen a few builds before, with some even featuring armor plating. Video after the break.

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The Little Cat That Could

October 10, 2018 by Brian McEvoy 10 Comments

Most humans take a year to learn their first steps, and they are notoriously clumsy. [Hartvik Line] taught a robotic cat to walk [YouTube link] in less time, but this cat had a couple advantages over a pre-toddler. The first advantage was that it had four legs, while the second came from a machine learning technique called genetic algorithms that surpassed human fine-tuning in two hours. That’s a pretty good benchmark.

The robot itself is an impressive piece inspired by robots at EPFL, a research institute in Switzerland. All that Swiss engineering is not easy for one person to program, much less a student, but that is exactly what happened. “Nixie,” as she is called, is a part of a master thesis for [Hartvik] at the University of Stavanger in Norway. Machine learning efficiency outstripped human meddling very quickly, and it can even relearn to walk if the chassis is damaged.

We have been watching genetic algorithm programming for more than half of a decade, and Skynet hasn’t popped forth, however we have a robot kitty taking its first steps.

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Make An Electric Skateboard For Your Cat

September 21, 2018 by Richard Baguley 10 Comments

Have you ever looked at your cat and thought “You know, my kitten really needs an electric skateboard!” Probably not, but this seems to have happened to [Kim Pimmel] while looking at his cat MIDI, so he decided to build one. This process involved building a simple, low powered skateboard with a Feather mainboard and motor controller combined with a laser-cut switch mechanism. When [Kim] puts a treat into the mechanism, the cat pulls the switch and the skateboard moves forward, moving into a brave new e-skateboarding feline future. MIDI looks somewhat unimpressed by this whole business, but I suspect that as long as the treats keep coming, he will be happy to keep on truckin’. Now, if he can just figure out how to persuade the cat to ollie, we will be really getting somewhere.

Feline tomfoolery seems to be a regular pastime here on these pages, and more than just a quest for easy moggy-driven clickbait. A lot of cat feeders and cat finders abound, but this project isn’t the only cat-operated one. Our readers’ pets can probably spot an Arduino a mile away by now.

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Cat Robot’s Secret To Slim Legs? Banish The Motors!

September 15, 2018 by Donald Papp 6 Comments

The first thing to notice about [Bijuo]’s cat-sized quadruped robot designs (link is in Korean, Google translation here) is how slim and sleek the legs are. That’s because unlike most legged robots, the limbs themselves don’t contain any motors. Instead, the motors are in the main body, with one driving a half-circle pulley while another moves the limb as a whole. Power is transferred by a cable acting as a tendon and is offset by spring tension in the joints. The result is light, slim legs that lift and move in a remarkable gait.

[Bijuo] credits the Cheetah_Cub project as their original inspiration, and names their own variation Mini Serval, on account of the ears and in keeping with the feline nomenclature. Embedded below are two videos, the first showing leg and gait detail, and the second demonstrating the robot in motion.

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Doing Logic Analysis To Get Around The CatGenie’s DRM

September 4, 2018 by Steven Dufresne 53 Comments

The CatGenie is an amazing device to watch in action, basically a self-cleaning litter box for cats that even does away with the need to replace the litter. It’s comparable to what the indoor flush toilet is for humans compared to maintaining a composting toilet. However, there is a problem. It uses costly soap cartridges which have to be replaced because an RFID reader and a usage counter prevent you from simply refilling them yourself.

[David Hamp-Gonsalves] reverse engineered the electronics so that he didn’t have to pay for the cartridges anymore. This has been done before and one of those who did it created a product called the CartridgeGenius, but it’s made and sold as a parttime project and there were none in stock. The cartridges have an RFID tag and another solution which we’ve covered before is to replace the RFID reader board with an Arduino. That’s the solution [David] adopted. So why write this post if this isn’t new?

The RFID reader board communicates with the rest of the CatGenie using I2C and he needed to know what was being transmitted. To do that he learned how to use a cheap logic analyzer to read the signals on the I2C wires, which makes this an interesting story. You can see the logic analyser output on his blog and GitHub repository along with mention of a timing issue he ran into. From what he learned, he wrote up Arduino code which sends the same signals. He and his cat are now sitting pretty.

What he didn’t do is make a video. But the CatGenie really is amazing to watch in action as it goes through its rather complex 30-35 minute process so we found a video of it doing its thing, shown at 3.5x speed, and included that below. If you’re into that sort of thing.

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