ZWave Mouse Trap

Every fall, after the crops are pulled out of the field behind my house, the season of mice trapping begins. Granted I’d rather not have mice in my new house, but I’m told that it comes with the territory of having a house backed up to a corn or soybean field. I found it rather tiresome to check the traps every morning. I thought that it would be great if the mouse traps could tell me when they were tripped. I simply hooked up an open close sensor to a mousetrap.

1. A standard run of the mill mousetrap

2. Some backing material to attach the trap and the sensor to. (I used a piece of vinyl blind)

3. Schlage Home Door and Window Sensor RS100 (must have open contacts)

4. Wire

The Schlage sensor comes with a mounting plate and slides only one way. Position the mount so that the end result has the green terminal connections closest to the trap.

Stick the adhesive tape to the back of the mount and adhere the mount to the backing material.

Solder two wires to the trap. One at the base of the hinge and the other at the base of the hold-down bar.

Glue the trap to the backing material, making sure that you have plenty of room between the sensor.

The sensor has a hole and a notch to thread the wires through but the outer shell for some strange reason doesn't have the same notch in the side. Cut the notch to match the notch on the sensor.

Finally, feed the wires through the hole in the bottom of the sensor and hook them into the terminal block. It doesn’t matter the order. Snap on the cover and you are ready to go.

There is a small matter of connecting the sensor to your smart home hub. You’ll need to follow the instructions for the sensor and the smart home hub to accomplish this feat. I use a SmartThings hub.

I hope you found this helpful.