Tweeting Cat Door

By Queuebot in Animals & Pets on Apr 6, 2009 at 1:25 am

If you want too much information about a couple of cats, see Gus and Penny’s Twitter page. These cats Tweet! Or, more acurately, their cat door Tweets when they go in and out. The door isn’t the famous Flo Control Project, but instead uses RFID chips.

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:

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by e1ghip.

Tags: pets cats

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Kalel
Apr 6th, 2009 at 1:38 am
Did the Internet need more twits?
Sphintuss
Apr 6th, 2009 at 2:43 am
Wouldn’t it be cool if the door would open for a non-authorised cat, then a trapdoor would open dropping the interloper into some kind of industrial grinder.
Skipweasel
Apr 6th, 2009 at 4:31 am
Just because it’s clever to do something, doesn’t mean that thing should be done.
Nicole B
Apr 6th, 2009 at 7:47 am
WOW. Its like crazy cat lady who carried pictures of her cats in her wallet and whips them out constantly to tell you about the funny thing they did this morning meets twitter. People say that twitter is self indulgent and self centered. Now I believe them.
setver
Apr 6th, 2009 at 10:13 am
This is a great idea. I wonder if it would also be able to read those tags that are implanted into some pets such as the “homeagain” tags (maybe they aren’t RFID or don’t have enough range?) If so, it would work great for tagged pets without a collar. Also, since many pets bear such tags, a log could be kept of attempted accesses.
DOJ
Apr 7th, 2009 at 1:46 am
Cats meow. Birds tweet.
Taylor
Apr 7th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
I have a twitter account set up for my dog that basically takes a picture of him when I reply to him. So for example, if I tweet “@ScruffTheDog What are you doing?” He responds with “http://twitpic.com/2yq8o – @jtsmith2 Look, it’s me!”. While not very useful for a dog, I could definitely see some use…maybe…somehow.

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