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Keeping up with my cat's 💩 using a RaspberryPi

Fernando on May 23, 2023

As a former dog owner and first time cat dad I was amazed at how cats are "potty trained" practically from birth. I was prepared to deal with the s...
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Michael Tharrington

This is freaking AWESOME... and hilarious too! Nicely done, Fernando. 🙌

Also, while the stats section may seem a bit silly, my wife (a veterinarian as you know) said that when a pet gets blocked it often goes undetected until the pet vomits or shows extreme signs of discomfort. If you're able to see how frequently (or rather infrequently) your cat is going, you're more likely to know if she is no longer regular and then you know to take your cat in for a checkup. So, the stats are kind of a health perk!

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Fernando

I didn’t consider the health/vet’s perspective and now feel less silly for keeping track of those stats haha thanks Michael (and Katelyn too lol)! 😁

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Peter Kim Frank

Incredible application of IRL observability! 😅

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Tawanda Nyahuye

Your style of writing is awesome and and very engaging ha ha ha ha

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Fernando

Thanks! Glad it was a fun read 😄

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balaliss

Man, I wish I thought of that when I had a cat. Of course, when I had a cat I was a teenager in middle school and only cared about how many Mama Celeste pizzas I could eat in a sitting. That's brilliant.

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Ryan Brown

You're not alone in the RAW POWER of your cat's displays of dominance aka:💩!
Our cat has movements like a beast man! and rarely covers them. Just to tell us who is in charge.

I love the project, great!

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Jess Lee

LOL thank you for this.

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Fernando

😁

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Medea

interesting post lmao

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Gregg Reno

Given the title, I thought you were going to tell us how your cat learned to use the Raspberry Pi 😜

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Daniël Franke

Nice idea.

I can heavily recommend you look at home assistant for this kind of stuff. It can make all your automation work locally (so no internet needed, and no amazon data collection) and you could do this with no code (or soldering, if you used zigbee sensors/switches) needed. I've been really enjoying using it for random (and cloudless) home automation stuff, the quality of HA is much better than it has any right to be.

That said, love the idea, and I might have to get a zigbee motion sensor for my cat boxes.

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Fernando

Home assistant was something I considered and will likely play with in the future. I didn’t know about zigbee devices, they seem cool. Thanks for the suggestions!

Good luck trying it out for your cats. I would love to read about that setup in the future if you’re ever interested in a write up afterwards 🙌🏼

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Travis⎷

Keeping up with your cat's what?