Building A Dead Mouse’s Switch

February 23, 2011 by Mike Nathan 40 Comments

building_a_better_mousetrap

[Ned] had a mouse problem in a very uncomfortable place.

No, not like the back of a Volkswagen, in his ceiling. He wanted to put a mouse trap up there to take care of the critter, but knowing how nasty a tripped trap can be after a few days, he was hesitant. He recalled a project he saw online where a mouse trap was wired like a dead man’s switch and he got to work putting together a trap of his own.

He scavenged some parts from around the house and wired up the mouse trap so that a pair of LEDs were lit so long as the trap had not been sprung on an unsuspecting mouse. Once a mouse is caught in the trap, his circuit is broken, and the LEDs go off, letting [Ned] know it’s time to poke his head back up into the ceiling and clean things up.

While his trap is decidedly low-tech, we always enjoy seeing a cheap and easy solution to annoying, everyday problems.

Arduino Mouse Trap

March 11, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 51 Comments

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[scott] had a need to capture a mouse and wanted to learn about how to program an arduino, so he built an Arduino controlled mousetrap. It is made from things he had laying around the house, like some Tupperware containers and wooden rods. The program is pretty simple, when a trip wire is touched, the servo jerks the wooden rod out of the way, closing the container. You can see it working after the break. The trip wire seems like a big failure point. he states that it is just a wire, slightly above a tin foil strip. That seems like it would only be a tiny area that the mouse would need to touch to trigger it. What better switch could he design as cheap and quick as possible?

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