Wi-Fi-Controlled Cat Door Lock
Cats bring many joy and entertainment. As Jason Winfield has found they may also bring you dead mice… as a gift! Since it’s difficult, if not impossible, to resolve this feline-human etiquette misunderstanding, Winfield did the next best thing and simply kept the cat door locked. However, after some tribulation with the manual latch, he decided to automate the process with a Wi-Fi-actuated stepper motor and webcam setup.To get more news about
security lock, you can visit securamsys.com official website.
The idea is fairly simple: an ESP8266 dev board generates a local webpage, and controls the pulses of a 28BYJ-48 stepper motor that turns a rack-and-pinion gear assembly. When commanded, the device pushes the rack up and blocks the door flap so that kitty can exit, but not re-enter. To remotely verify the cat’s intentions, the webcam theoretically letting Winfield check out the situation before lowering the rack to grant access to his home.
For manual operation, a button built into the 3D-printed enclosure that allows entry for 10 seconds. Cleverly, the rack extends beyond the pinion gear when fully extended, enabling removal in the case of power failure. There’s also a low-limit switch for pinion orientation.
While it’s a clever device, as shown toward the end of the first video below, things did not quite work out as planned. I won’t spoil things, but you can skip to around 3:30 to hear an example of why working with animals when filming can be difficult. If you'd still like to try this out, build instructions for the project are available here.
Wi-Fi-Controlled Cat Door Lock
