Chasing Cats
myplace.frontier.com
myplace.frontier.com
[0] http://slashdot.org/story/24258
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20010405175311/http://quantumpic...
"It's a feature not a bug."
Creating a system to traumatise a cat is objectively more harmful than making areas you don't want a cat to go repulsive to the cat.
I've seen the latter method work beautifully with nervous cats, kittens, older cats, etc. Whereas I would have reservations about using the former method with those types of cats because it serves to be startling and traumatic to a cat.
A door that only lets cats in, based on image recognition.
As an aside, I've really enjoyed the particle photon so far. It was a little wonky at first when they didn't have persistent storage of state changes, but now that's up and running, it's flawless. It runs the lights in my house (via a relay just like OP) and has recovered from a few power outages with no attention necessary from me.
https://web.archive.org/web/20010405175311/http://quantumpic...
The future is looking really exciting too, Particle's new cellular chips open up a lot of possibilities (especially with their out of the box no-need-to-use-a-dynamic-dns-system), and I will definitely litter my apartment with ESP32s -- built-in bluetooth 4.2, that can talk to the built-in bluetooth on my new Raspberry Pis, I love 2016!
I think the most interesting and quickest to explain thing I've done with these chips (the ESP8266) was a chain of temperature/humidity sensors packed in my office building.
I only ended up building out a couple (soldering by hand on prototype boards) but I used a ESP8266 + 1200mAh battery pack + DHT22 sensors to make small modules we could put in different corners of the building. We had A/C issues during hot summers and it's a lot easier to report them to the building management by saying "4 conference rooms have been above 80 degrees all day". The modules woke themselves up every 30 min, waited until a stable recording was captured, then POST'd their hardcoded label (like "Corner office"), the temperature, the humidity, and the time to a Heroku server (which when loaded in a browser simply spat out all records).
At home, the one semi-recent project I've been most proud of was a remote trigger for my A/C. I used a Raspberry Pi with both an IR emitter and a IR sensor attached, taught it my cheap window A/C unit's remote's codes, then emulated them to turn the A/C on and off based on a server and small app that did geofencing. My apartment didn't have built-in A/C, but it started cooling off the second I walked out of my office at around 6 PM on a weekday :)
If you're interested in building things, you should get a Raspberry Pi 3 or one of these chips (and a pack of sensors/inputs) well before you have an idea. I set them up with access on my WiFi then just leave them in a corner for months (sometimes years) before I use them for anything, but I think the most important part is having the smallest barrier from "ooh! what if!" to initial prototype.
But instead of cats, I want it to detect Fedex and UPS delivery drivers. And instead of turning on the sprinklers, I want it to ring my doorbell so that I know there's a package sitting on my front porch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r77lEmGaCXI
I bet people would pay real money for a system like this.
https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/kgrandis/pycon-2012-milita...
They worked reasonably well, but the cats have learned that if they run quickly past one, it won't hiss. So now I'm thinking of modifying them so they use an IR beam, and a beam interruption would trigger the hiss.
The eternal battle goes on.
It should work against birds, as long as the IR detector can sense a change. The bird must stay in one place for a couple of seconds at least.
https://www.tensorflow.org/mobile.html
http://mxnet.readthedocs.io/en/latest/how_to/smart_device.ht...
One simpler way to go IMO would be to put the system at ground level and use two motion detectors, one aimed specifically to "see" only things that are a meter or more above the ground. Humans would trigger both, but the cat would only trigger the one aimed at the ground.
1) set the motion detection area only on the lawn 2) Set a delay for like > 30s movement 3) Set times of movement (ie. when they're at work)
But the big question is: did it work ?
With dogs, you get the pooping (which is at least half an owner problem), squirrels dig up my yard, gophers same, ants all over the place. Can't say I've ever had an issue with cats, but I trust the creator of the project has a reason, and as a cat lover, I'd laugh my ass off at video of a cat getting hit by surprise sprinklers.
"Cats regurgitate when they eat grass because they lack the necessary enzymes to break down vegetable matter. Does this mean your cat likes to throw up? Well, while it's doubtful that kitty enjoys the act, this up-chucking sensation may eliminate all indigestible matter from the cat's digestive tract, making it feel a whole lot better. This is important because cats eat their prey as is, including both the edible and inedible parts (fur, bones, feathers, etc.)"
https://www.predatorpeestore.com/wolf-urine-for-bobcat-probl...
I actually am a little tempted to blow some time implementing something similar this weekend, because an unknown animal keeps leaving droppings in my backyard at random times. I'm less annoyed with that specifically, and more just curious about the phantom pooper in general. And, well, by the time I have the pictures figured out.. I have a Rachio, which means I can turn the sprinklers on through an API call anyway.
If you think it's "natural" and your cats should be free to roam, then you simply should not own cats. Your cat is not just "visiting neighbours". It is destroying other people's yards and killing off local bird populations. Yet you don't care, because it's out of sight and out of mind. All you care about is how you feel for allowing your cat to be free, while shunning all responsibility for how your cat is impacting others.
People who keep "outdoor cats" remind me of an acquaintance I once knew who owned birds with clipped wings, kept in tiny cages for 23-24 hours a day. Her reasoning for not finding it morally reprehensible? "Well these exotic birds cannot survive our Canadian winters, they need to be kept indoors!". So... you're buying exotic birds that do not belong in our climate, mutilating them, imprisoning them... and somehow manage to revamp the logic in your head to make yourself their savior?
I hope one day aliens come to our planet, put us all in 10x10 foot cages after severing our spinal columns so we can't walk, while making sure to let us know it's for our own good and has nothing to do with their own agenda. Or the aliens can come and cohabitate with us, but let their human-eating pets roam outdoors and deny any responsibility for those pets' actions.
Nowadays however we have our own cat. So no more cat shit from the neighbors. That helped wonderfully. Our cat loved to go outdoors, but after a while every other day he catched another bird and was nice enough to bring home his catch. So while it's pretty good for him, he lost his outdoor privileges.
That is.. he still gets to go outdoors, but nowadays I walk him. Yip, that's right, I'm the loony tune that walks his cat. Cats are not the easiest to teach to walk on a leash. But he got used to it and loves it. In fact he asks me to walk him several times a day. Unless it rains then he sleeps.
It's not like walking a dog where you tell the dog where to go, but it's more like you're the dog. He tells you where we go (if we go that is, because he likes to sniff around more as walk)
Anyways, just wanted to say that there are other alternatives for cat lovers then having them terrorize the neighbors and catch birds.
Some animals will become pests no matter what but I've never met someone with such a negative view of outdoor cats it was just a bit surprising.
A cat or two never bothers me. But when my neighbor gets to putting out 5 or 6 food dishes for the strays each Spring, we can easily find a dozen cats in our back yard.
Don't get me wrong, the whole thing was hilarious, and I used to interject little "meows" every now and then just to confuse the cats. It wasn't as funny when I needed to be awake early for an exam or, later in life, while I spent a few months recovering from pretty harsh medical treatment. The solution was keeping a bucket of water next to the window and just get them soaked. That would stop them for a couple weeks at a time.
Yes, there is an advantage on they being around: it keeps the squirrels away from my berry bushes. But I still would prefer they didn't come.
edit: The title of the submission has been changed; originally, it was something like "Using Deep Learning to Keep Cats off the Lawn"
The official rule is to flag if the content is spammy/off-topic.
Flagging first without reading in deed seems like abuse of flags. (Possible exceptions for very obvious offenders against site guidelines.)
> If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its 'flag' link.
Real-world example:
There have been a couple articles recently posted with titles such as "Do X with all the things using this one weird trick". The articles were solid, informative, and on-topic, despite the otherwise regrettable titles. I even complained about the titles in the comments, but not the content. I could only make this judgment by reading the articles and denying my flag-hammer until I knew they weren't garbage.
I think we're disagreeing on a difference between the proverbial letter and spirit of the law/guidelines.