Here’s an interesting use of technology. Kimberly Nixon and her husband rigged up a very special cat door for their two cats Gus and Penny. Apparently the neighborhood cats were helping themselves to Gus and Penny’s food, so Kimberly’s husband, a programmer who likes to build stuff, created a cat door with an RFID reader. Each cat has an RFID tag on its collar. When the cat gets close to the door, the reader reads the tag and opens the door. This keeps the neighborhood cats out of the food. Then, to keep track of Gus and Penny’s whereabouts, the whole contraption is connected to an old laptop which has software installed that snaps a photo of the cat entering or exiting the door (see images above) and then posts a message along with the picture to Twitter. Brilliant!
Read more about the project here and watch the action on Gus and Penny’s Twitter page.
Via Apartment Therapy Unplugged
April 10th, 2009 at 4:24 am
This is awesome. I wish I was this technologically advanced
April 10th, 2009 at 6:30 am
awesome!
April 10th, 2009 at 7:34 am
I’m such a dork. I love this.
April 10th, 2009 at 7:35 am
How original! I love it
April 10th, 2009 at 7:55 am
WOW! I was just telling my husband yesterday (after our getting up and sitting down session with our cats) that we needed something like this. I am definitely going to be one of the first in line to get one of these!
April 10th, 2009 at 8:21 am
Freaking BRILLIANT – I’ve tried and tried to think how to accomplish this! Many people with multiple cats need something like this to give Cat A access to the diabetic food and keep Cat B (with kidney problems) out of that same food.
Gus, we gotta talk!!!
April 10th, 2009 at 8:45 am
Love it! But I’d have to surgically implant the tag since my boys can’t keep their collars on.
April 10th, 2009 at 11:35 am
I saw this same thing years ago sold in a catalog for some major pet store sorry! But it didn’t have the camera set up that is a cool thing.
April 10th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Aww, I love their Twitter page and this is a clever idea, but I’d actually encourage other cats to stop by for a bite and a snort, if we had a cat door! Of course, we’re an indoor-only family.
April 10th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I spent a fortune on one of those things and my dogs were afraid of it! They just chewed up the collar sensors. I am so glad your cats are smarter!
April 10th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
That’s fantastic! My sweetie is just suggesting that they do something with GPS maybe to twitter their whereabouts more thoroughly
I bet those kitties are very proud that only they are special enough to get inside.
April 28th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
This is brilliant!
May 5th, 2009 at 10:08 am
@Jana:
If your cats have been radio tagged at the vet, you can just reuse those tags. I’m not sure if those are RFID specifically, but if you can build an RFID scanner, you can build whatever’s needed to be able to pick up and identify your cats tags.
@Kim & Gus:
Are you guys using your own rfid tags, or were the cat’s chipped already with a service?