Are you a busy cat owner who would like to take care of your cats while you’re away? What are those cute felines doing when you are not home? Don’t worry! PiCat meets all your needs. PiCat is a cat reminder and laser toy that makes you a better owner. This multifunctional system implemented on a Raspberry Pi 4 has three functions: reminder, play, and photo.
Team member: Kunpeng Huang, Xinyi Yang
The reminder mode shows critical information about the cat on a PiTFT display with a colorful user interface, such as its birthday, as well as the date for the next health check and insurance update. The play mode keeps your cat active and engaged using a laser toy. The toy is implemented using a laser diode actuated by two servo motors. The laser toy can be activated automatically when a Pi Camera detects a cat using computer vision. Alternatively, the toy can be controlled remotely by the user through a webserver. The photo mode takes pictures of the cat periodically once the camera recognizes it. The system saves all the images locally and displays the latest photos on the webserver.
Hardware schematics of PiCat, showing the major components of the system including the Raspberry Pi 4, PiTFT display, Pi Camera Module v2, two micro servo motors (SG90), and a laser diode.
The mount for Pi Camera with adjustable vertical angle (left) and the 3D-printed pan-tilt platform for the laser diode actuated by two servo motors (right).
The user interface for the reminder function. The bottom right image shows the interface running on PiTFT.
Annotated screenshot of the webserver, including a PiCamera video stream, the form for laser control, and cat images.