Cat flaps?

Are there any smart cat flaps? It would be nice to be able to get notifications of my cats comings & goings, and also control if/when he’s allowed to enter & exit.

Thoughts?

hook this

up with this

make a rule in rule machine to notify you when contact is made

Not compatible that I know of, but you could use the following with the open closed sensor to get some data on when coming and going and control what comes in and out

ben heck (tbhs the ben heck show) built a lockable flap for dogs in one of his youtube episodes. It used a proximity sensor he hacked from a shock collar, but you could easily mod it with various ways to disable the opening by power instead of dog range (cat).

i wouldn’t worry too much about locking a cat door honestly. Prowlers can’t use them, and you don’t want a door your cat is trained to use to work sometimes. They will be likely to just not use it at all
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODlNmHAZFHw is the video i was referring to. start watching at minute 11 to see how he implemented a lock on the door.

I wonder how popular a smart cat flap would be? Awesome idea…i have a spare never used rfid cat flap I could try and prototype one with :slight_smile:

Thanks for the information guys, certainly some food for thought. A starting point might be to just add a open/closed sensor on the flap and build up from there.

Old thread I know but If you are still looking for a solution @JociePup, then there is a new integration for the Sure Microchip Cat Flap now available here that gives you exactly what you were looking for.

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I’ve got a setup that works nicely:

  • Any door/window sensor attached to cat flap - I use Xiaomi from GearBest (£7).
  • Virtual presence for cat in SmartThings.
  • Piston in WebCore to monitor cat flap sensor and toggle virtual presence with each opening. (Took a bit of experimentation to overcome double triggers when the flap swings after use but now reliable.)

I also have another piston that runs each time cat presence changes - only if I’m in home mode it sends an alert to my phone telling me he’s come in or gone out.

Sometimes he uses the human door and so I can google his presence with a voice command to Alexa too.

Happy to share the pistons / setup if helpful.

Yes please, share that piston

Sensor installed like this - close to the hinge of the catflap so that it has to open a good distance to trigger. This helps prevent extra swings registering and also if he’s just pawing at the flap it doesn’t trigger.

I’ve then got a virtual presence installed. I did this through the SmartThings dashboard but I think there’s now a smart app to make that easier. This is the piston that toggles that presence sensor. The top part (if contact sensor changes) is all that’s needed for the catflap. Because he sometimes comes in or out through the door I wanted an easy way to toggle his presence status so have and IFTTT applet (webhooks - if I say “trigger cat” then it triggers the second part of this piston). An alternative would be to use ST app or kick the catflap open to mimic him using it.

I have a separate notification piston - again you’d only need the top part. For all of this.

Hope that all makes sense and helps. Give me a shout if you need any help with it.

Hey @ajclarkin Thanks for the post,
one question …
In the dashboard, creating a virtual presence …
Did you select “Simulated Presence Sensor” or “webCoRE Presence Sensor”

@konni

Simulated Presence Sensor is what you want. For the network ID give it anything that won’t clash with your other devices. (For example, all my virtual devices have ids beginning V: VPR01, VPR02…) When you’ve added that you should see it in ST app as a presence - then you can go ahead and use it in webcore.

If you really want to do the catflap right, you need to know whether the cat is inside or outside… fortunatly there is a solution…
Surepet have a connected cat flap and someone has connected it to smarththings so you can automate stuff… eg turn on the garden light when they go outside, and turn it off when they come inside and also turn on the tv so they have something to listen to and look at!!!
you could even turn on the heating and have the connected food tray dispence food…

OK so kidding aside, you can connect the cat flap in an intellegent way. Also someone else took the knowhow on how this was done and then built an alexa skill… so you can find out who is inside or outside when talking to alexa.

To quote someone from work… ‘so you can stalk your cats now!’

seehttps://community.smartthings.com/t/release-sure-petcare-connect-v1-2b/172360 for more information

forgot to say, this also gives gives you presence sensor on the cats… so the catflap is one thing, but the cats now have presence sensors!