Electronic pet doors.

HarveyH42 said:

Our security badges at work have RFID chips in them to unlock doors. There is also a barcode for the time clock. One or the other gets damage almost yearly. The door locks only have a range of a few inches. I guess it's a good system for office workers, but the badges get beat up out in the warehouse. Wondering how they would hold up to pets.

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3v0 said:

Back when I was a working stiff we had RFID cards. If I was very lucky I did not have to take my wallet out of my pocket. Most of the time you had to swipe the reader with the wallet.

Perhaps I can use an antenna to give a dependable range of a few feet (if possible) and another detector to determine the dog is near the door. The door would open if the ID tag was present and if the dog was in front of the door. Maybe use IR or ultra sonic to track the dog as it approaches the door.

I have found a door by "power pet". They use a small ultra sonic transmitter attached to the pet collar to trigger the door. It is a good idea but I do not like the idea of having to catch the battery in the collar prior to going dead. I could hack the $350 price if the unit was made to last but it seems to have a life span of a year or less. Collars are not water proof. Poor customer service.

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BaCaRdi said:

**broken link removed**

I also made my own receiver using parallax's rfid board. Now the opening has the antenna going around the inside. My application was sensing the cat in this case to turn on some other stuff. Can't tell you that part yet..hehe

May help in your quest,
-BaC

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dknguyen said:

How do mice get into pet doors? Aren't they always pretty high off the ground to prevent that? Just look at the photo someone posted earlier of a pet door.

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BaCaRdi said:

Yes, but in my case they walk through the antenna, so the 3" don't matter. Yours would need more distance, there are allot of stuff on building them. I just did a google search and found allot. Again I was sensing their being there, and also could tell patters and behaver to built a better mouse trap persay.

-BaC

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3v0 said:

I just started looking at the RFID stuff. I found a site that has a design for a amp that goes between the reader and the antenna. There goal was to show how the info could be stolen from RFID cards.

The dog already has an implanted RFID tag under her skin. The sort they use to ID lost dogs. I wonder if there is any chance I can read it as she nears the door. As you said there seems to be much info on antenna design for these systems. I am a CS so it takes me a while to muck my way through some of it. Not too bad so far.

Found some an active tag but battery life is too short. Maybe plug the dog in each night when I turn in.

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mneary said:

You might even get simpler than RFID. All you have to do is thread a conductive loop into their collars and any conventional "metal detector" circuit will detect them. Of course as noted above, your detector loop entirely surrounds the door.

Other pets, and mice, who aren't wearing a conductive-loop collar won't trigger the door.

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3v0 said:

I think I like that idea. The RFID stuff seems over kill. A while back there was thread about burying a loop in the ground for detecting cars. Might be a place to start.

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BaCaRdi said:

Sure that is why I don't use active, as they need to be powered, the tags are more-or-less power by the RF waves, therefor eliminating the power issue on the tags. Again for me this wasn't an issue, as they walked through the field.
-BaC

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