What do you want to do with your smart home?

This seriously can be done if you have the time and patience and a toilet that nobody else needs to use. There are different methods and a little more difficult as they get older but it’s doable. One method is the whole Saran wrap in the bowl and then filling that with cat litter and then eventually weening them from the cat litter and eventually they just sit on the edge, do their thing and walk away. Then you add a sensor that when there is no motion after 5 minutes, you flush the toilet (Meet the Parents Jinxey style).

This gets me thinking. We have all these powerful indoor robot vacuums, why not an outdoor version, kind of a cross between a lawn mower and a Roomba to go clean up leaves and dog crap off the lawn? That doesn’t sound so unrealistic.

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LOL @ Jason. You weren’t very specific with these questions. You bet them that WHATEVER they want, can already be done :slight_smile:

For Jason:

I have a Bengal, and although she doesn’t use a toilet, she walks on a leash and returns fake mice back to me after I throw them and she loves getting in the shower and wet (Bengals rock).

So although none of mine are trained and you don’t want to do this, I strongly recommend this from PetSmart or Petco. I have 3 of them for 3 cats and I don’t do anything with litter for almost a month. When the electronic indicator gets to about 70 on each of them, I take the trays, out the lids on throw them in the trash and slide in a new tray with the litter and reset the counter and whallah. Has made my life so much easier!!! They are a little pricey and I recommend you get them with the lids and then they sell the litter trays in packs of 3 which is a little cheaper than buying them one by one. If you have questions hit me up offline. I’m telling you these are so worth the the friggen money.

http://www.petsmart.com/cat/supplies-and-training/litter-and-waste-disposal/litter-boxes/petsafe-scoopfree-self-cleaning-cat-litter-box-6678.html?cgid=200094

http://www.petsmart.com/cat/supplies-and-training/litter-and-waste-disposal/litter-boxes/petsafe-scoopfree-litter-3-pack-cat-tray-cartridge-7266.html?green=7ED1D820-63F7-5C6B-0057-789335E34629&src=recommended

No Z-Wave or Zigbee models lol, but it will change your life!

My own use cases are pretty simple, but my primary requirement is six months MFOP (maintenance free operating period). And preferably 12 months. That is, six months where what worked on Monday is still working on Tuesday. No surprise or unrefuseable outages, whether they’re for maintenance, or firmware updates, or just glitches. Set and Forget.

And I need it to meet my HA budget of $200-$500 per room, with a maximum of $3600 over a 3 year replacement cycle.

I can give you more details about what that $3600 has to cover in terms of use cases, but those are the operating parameters. :sunglasses:

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I actuallly just watched this. My cat is 10 I don’t think I have a prayer in hell to get him to do this, lol.

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Lol. The other video above that only listed the url. That one utilizes an older cat. Look into the PetSmart route I gave you. That gives you as close to automation that you are prolly gonna get :slight_smile:

I appreciate, but I think I am better off leaving it alone. My cat although the sweetest animal I have ever owned is a little tempermental. If I piss him off he will piss in front of the box. lol

My oldest cat refused to do it.

Talk about temperamental… I’ve watched her get mad at the younger cats, wait for them to go in the Litterbox, ten go in and piss on them…

Cats are evil

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@bamarayne can you point me in the direction of the spa chem monitoring? You mention it can be done which sounds amazing I would be looking for PH, alkalinity, chlorine etc. Temperature and control spa jets etc should be possible with Balboa Hot Tub WiFi Module Integration
Thanks

Intercoms Check!

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My cat is 8 and going through toilet training, and while hes struggling with transitioning off of the last stage to the real deal toilet I am very proud of him and its made a huge improvement in my quality of life.

Automated litterboxes are not the way to go in my opinion. They still require maintenance themselves and additional cleaning. I thought the point was to touch as little of that nasty cat litter as possible? The dust gets in all kinds of places and can prove to affect reliability of the machine.

Even if my 8 year old cat never graduates off of the last stage - I consider this a huge win.
Its a simple seat adapter that goes over the normal lid, comes off for when humans need to use it no problem. Its really not a big deal at all and they dont use litter at all on this stage, so thats not a factor anymore.

From the responses in this thread, I dont think anyone here really has personal experience, so please let me weigh in with my own:

ITS WORK. You have to be willing to put in the time and effort to accomplish a litter free lifestyle. This involves training the cats beforehand to associate the toilet with positive things, moving the litterbox next to the toilet, switching to a flushable wood based litter, and having patience for the inevitable mistakes and messes.

At the very least I recommend switching to a flushable litter and putting the litter box next to the toilet. simply scooping into the toilet was a marked improvement for everyone involved in the process.

link to the flushable litter I used

Link to the toilet training kit I used

Its not for everyone, but the benefits are undeniable.

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I need a connected space heater that costs under $200 that i can turn on/off and set the temp with Alexa. And without setting up a bunch of different scenarios. Just a heater, ST, smart app, dth, and Alexa.

Speaking just for myself, I would never put a space heater on SmartThings. The fire hazard is too high, and as someone who is quadriparetic I have to take fire safety very seriously. SmartThings occasionally has random events, garage doors that open, lights that come on… I don’t put anything on it that would be unsafe if it ran for 24 hours unattended. But that’s just me.

Well, me, and the official product usage guidelines. :wink:

https://www.smartthings.com/guidelines

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Right, but if you have a space heater with a thermostat already in it, it won’t be on constantly. Just to get the room to a certain temperature. Plus, all space heaters have safety switches that turn them off automatically if they tip over. I’m not sure where the safety issues lie in just being able to adjust the thermostat or turn it on/off by voice. There are safety issues with other devices that have a pretty simple work around. (I.e. Garage doors.)

Space heaters still cause an unfortunately large number of home fires, which is why every UL listed one will include instructions in its user manual that it should never be used unattended.

The most common cause of these fires isn’t the space heater tipping over – – its items being piled in front of it or even on top of it. During warm months, people literally forget that the heater is there. So even if the Space heater has a thermostat to turn itself off if it gets too hot, by the time it’s started a fire that’s too late.

The challenge with space heaters is that in order to get hot enough to warm up the room, they get much hotter than most people realize.

Obviously people have to make their own decisions about these devices, but the manufacturers a very specific that they are only supposed to be used when there is a person in the room with them. And once you automate them, you introduce the possibility poltergeists.

Of course, for me, might biggest concern is that I would be in the room, but no one else would be, and a fire would start and I would not be able to get out of the room.

I do pay more attention to fire safety for this reason than most people, but check the user manual for any space heater that you are looking at and it probably has the “unattended” warning. So it’s just something to consider.

From a 2010 article:

http://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/news-and-media/press-room/news-releases/2010/space-heaters-involved-in-79-percent-of-fatal-home-heating-fires

February 11, 2010 – While only 32 percent of home heating fires involve space heaters, they are involved in 79 percent of home heating fire deaths, according to the new report Home Fires Involving Heating Equipment released today by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). Heating equipment continues to be the second leading cause of home fires behind cooking and the second leading cause of home fire deaths behind smoking.

The difference between the built-in thermostat on the device And adding voice capabilities is that you have networked the Device allowing for unattended operation even if you don’t plan to use it that way. And, again, poltergeists.

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We leave a space heater on 24/7 in Brandon’s room during the winter. Granted, someone is always home and it is kept in a corner by itself. But point taken.

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