Sad Cat Fixer

Making a 'cat toy' using Arduino components to entertain sad cats, and turn them into yoked cats.

You will need:

• LEDs or Laser

• Ultrasonic Sensor

• IR Remote and Receiver

• Buzzer

• Potentiometer

• Servo Motors

• Arduino

Plan out the logic for the Sad Cat Fixer. I have already done so using a previous concept in mind. Figure out what you want the toy to do, and how to program that.

Test out your hardware before you start building. Make a very simple circuit and program to test the functionality of your hardware. Doing this will save you lots of time diagnosing hardware issues later on in case something goes wrong.

Put together the hardware and assemble your circuit. You may want to use a circuit building software such as TinkerCAD before building it in real life, as you can quickly make adjustments to your circuit. Carefully connect all your components and keep track of all the pins and wires. This will help you avoid wiring issues later on. One thing you may want to try is cutting wires to make them appear neater, but do this only once you are 100% sure your wiring is correct.

Time to use the code to operate your circuit. You will need to use the Arduino IDE in order to compile and upload the code to your Arduino. Once that is done, make sure you have the IR Remote library installed. To quickly summarize the code, it receives and decodes an IR signal to check what button the user pressed. Based on the user's inputs, it will rotate the horizontal servo, vertical servo, or turn on the laser. It will also ping the ultrasonic sensor once for each iteration and sound the buzzer when the cat is in proximity.

Time to have fun and run the project in its entirety! Test to see if anything isn't working, and troubleshoot it. For coding issues, check the data in the serial monitor and trace any variables that aren't lining up. For hardware issues, check wiring, pins, and if worst comes to worst, rebuild your circuit. Once you feel comfortable with the project, enjoy it!

Make the circuit into a usable toy for cats. Building materials you may want to consider are cardboard, coroplast, and plywood. You can recreate this concept.