Today we will follow up on the motion activated toilet project which we started developing for toilet trained cats so the toilet may flush automatically when they go on it.
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As you may remember the device was composed of an Arduino uno board, a servo motor, a PIR motion sensor and a string that would attach the servo motor to the toilet lever to pull it down.
After being tested for more than a year it was found to be inefficient for many reasons.
First the 6 minute wait was good for one cat, but since we have two cats it proved to not work for the second kitty, since cats are sometimes territorial animals, if the second cat would see or smell the first cat's excrement on the toilet they wouldn't use it and would poop on the bathroom floor instead.
Then we had the problem that the toilet kept flushing more than once due to two occurrences. First the cats would linger around the toilet for longer than they needed to after doing their needs thus making the toilet flush many times. Second whenever the cats visited the toilet just for kicks the toilet would flush.
Due to these inconveniences we revised the Arduino code many times, only to come to the conclusion that the PIR sensor was not the best choice for our project, so we did what we suspected from the very beginning and used an arduino ultrasonic sensor HC-SR04.
The base code was simple enough, it required a few changes to accommodate for the distance but we got it working.
Now the toilet only flushes when the cats get really near to the sensor and actually sit down eliminating the constantly flushing problem, and it only waits about 2 minutes to do so, thus solving the second kitty going on the bathroom floor.
Also we made some aesthetic improvements to the device so it looks much more appealing to the eye, but there is a lot more to work on concerning this aspect of the project. Also we modified the angle at which the servo motor attached to the toilet lever, so there is less pull on the servo motor and it can be attached to the toilet only with a double sided tape. Here are the pictures of the new model:
The picture on the left shows the servo motor attached to the lever. Right now it's attached by a string and some duct tape, but that will change in the future version of the project.
On the right picture you can see the Arduino encased in TBM's symbol of hope. It's a little wet but in the future it will be water proof. Also we added a resistor protected LED that turns on whenever the sensor is activated.
All in all we still have many challenges to face until the device is completed, including the toilet lever not fully coming back up once it is flushed due to old bad toilet design which you can see here:
The next prototypes would have:
- Improved aesthetics
- Add ons to allow for easy installation
- Possibility to change programming for old toilet or new toilets
- Possibility to modify for human use
- Possibility to get rid of cables that connect sensor to Arduino
That's it for today everyone. We apologize for such a long entry and promise to make future ones shorter and more helpful!
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