Description:

Animal lovers are famously obsessive about their animals and the animals’ safety. Cat owners typically want to know a few basic facts about the status of their moggie: Is the cat inside or outside the house; if outside, how long has the cat been absent; have other cats been trying to come inside? The purpose of this project is to research, design, and build an IoT (Internet of Things)-enabled cat door that provides this essential telemetry to concerned cat owners!

The project will require hardware and software skills, and you will develop expertise in RFID (radio frequency identification) tags, MQTT (message queuing telemetry transport), MQTT gateways, electronics, embedded software, etc. It is important that the system be low-power and low-cost to be successful.

Type:

Undergraduate

Outcome:

The outcomes for this project include:

• A system of two-or more coordinated cat doors that report their status via an MQTT server.
  
• Information derived from the basic status data to indicate disposition of the animals.
  
• Quantitative results on power consumption, cost, design options, and recommendations for commercial production.
  

Prerequisites

None

Specialisations

• Computer Systems Engineering
• Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Categories

• Embedded Systems

Supervisor

• Mark Andrews

Co-supervisor

• Catherine Watson

Team

Allocated (Not available for preferences)

Lab

Lab allocations have not been finalised