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Cat Litter Robot / Raspberry Pi mashup

Macmuchmore

Hi - I purchased a Litter Robot for my cats.  I want to use my Raspberry Pi to notify me (on my iPhone) when the waste drawer is full.

 

What I have done so far is to:

1) Take a light sensor (a TSL2561) and connect it to a Raspberry Pi

2) Wrote a python script so that the sensor looks for the flashing light (a nice feature of the Litter Robot is that when the waste drawer is full, one of its lights flashes) once per hour (so as not to send too many notifications)

3) incorporate the Pushetta API in my script to push the notification to my phone

4) Connected the Pi and sensor to the litter robot (with the sensor in front of the light that flashes)

 

The light on the Litter Robot is on constantly, then flashes when the drawer is full.  I made the script look once an hour for instances when the light is off, with the idea that it would only be off when it is flashing.  The hope was that the sensor would "catch" an instance of darkness and then send the notification.

 

This has not been a great solution.  Is there a way to have the sensor "see" the light is flashing and send the notification then?  I would love some help with this - or would love to see you guys do a show about this.

 

 

Thanks!

Andrew

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  • Why are you checking the sensor once in an hour, as the robot led is also flashing once per hour they both might not be activated at the same time and you will miss the flash.  you can use something like interrupt to make trigger when changes happen. I am not aware of whether that is possible using python but as I use JAVA the Pi4j library provides listeners to do so.

     

    Hope it will help You

     

    Thanks

    Bikash

  • in reply to oksbwn

    Bikash Panda wrote:

     

    Why are you checking the sensor once in an hour, as the robot led is also flashing once per hour they both might not be activated at the same time and you will miss the flash. you can use something like interrupt to make trigger when changes happen. I am not aware of whether that is possible using python but as I use JAVA the Pi4j library provides listeners to do so.

     

    Hope it will help You

     

    Thanks

    Bikash

    I don't think he meant the robot is flashing once per hour, I think that flashes constantly when the waste drawer is full. However, your suggestion is still sound and using an interrupt would be the obvious way forward here.

     

    Best Regards,

     

    Rachael

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  • in reply to oksbwn

    Bikash Panda wrote:

     

    Why are you checking the sensor once in an hour, as the robot led is also flashing once per hour they both might not be activated at the same time and you will miss the flash. you can use something like interrupt to make trigger when changes happen. I am not aware of whether that is possible using python but as I use JAVA the Pi4j library provides listeners to do so.

     

    Hope it will help You

     

    Thanks

    Bikash

    I don't think he meant the robot is flashing once per hour, I think that flashes constantly when the waste drawer is full. However, your suggestion is still sound and using an interrupt would be the obvious way forward here.

     

    Best Regards,

     

    Rachael

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