Litter-box That Can Detect Cat Faeces

This is a project for the Arduino Hackathon competiton, which was organised by UQ Mechatronics and Robotics Society on 8 - 10 April 2022. It won the Best Presentation Prize and the First Prize.

This project was made by Jasper, Derek and myself (Jack). The prototype is just a proof of concept and is quite rudimentary.

The prototype litter-box has an ultrasonic sensor, a pressure plate, a push button to represent/simulate a RFID input (it is something we can add in a future version of the prototype).

How it works:

The pressure plate detects if the cat has entered or exited the litter-box. Combined with the simulated RFID, we can accurately determine if the cat is in the box or out of it.

The ultrasonic sensor detects if there is an object in the box. If we know the cat is out of the box, the detected object has to be the cat feces. If feces is detected, the alarm system is triggered, prompting the owner to clear the litter box. The alarm system includes a red LED and a buzzer.

This page is only intended for documenting the project, not for explaining how to make it.

This page is only intended for documenting the project, not for explaining how to make it.

As a short summary, we used Arduino and 3D printing.