RaspiTrap V1.0

Description

RaspiTrap is an animal friendly mousetrap, with photo, video and email function. You may ask, why somebody would build such a mousetrap? Why not?

Details

Easy, the mouse enters the trap. Passes the light barrier. Raspberry detects and activates servo motor. Door closes. Now the Pi takes a Pic and sends it via IM and Mail. That's it.

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CAD Design

First of all I tried the design in Sketchup 8, which is still free. I could try a few designs virtually to see if everything fits.

Housing

To build the housing (350mm x 110mm), I used 5mm foamed PVC Sheets. So, I could use a cutter as CNC machine?

Infrared Barrier

To detect if a mouse is inside, I made an infrared barrier. It was build on a breadboard for testing. I was too lazy to make my own PCB, so I ordered it from China. It took one week and the result is stunning. I wanted to use an external power supply for it, but decided later to use the 5V from the Raspberry Pi.

Pi Camera with Fisheye

I used a cheap fish eye lens to mount in front of the Pi camera. For mobile phones these lenses are fine, because the phones have an auto focus. The Pi camera has a fixed focus so that makes the picture blurry. I will try to change the focus on the Pi camera in the future.

Transmitter and Receiver

To fix the IR sensors TEMIC K153P inside the trap, I manually milled two grooves. They were placed behind the 3mm acrylic glass plates. As you can see, the 9gr. servo motor is already mounted.

Everything in Place

At the back side you will find the Raspberry Pi, the servo motor and then PCB for the Infrared barrier. The release mechanism on the left side is a thin piece of PVC. It is connected over a thin metal bar with the servo motor. Behind the servo is an end switch. This one detects, when the trap was released.

Inside the trap is white LED. It shows me the status of the mousetrap and it is used as flashlight to take the pictures. The Raspberry runs on Archlinux.

Things to add:

• Web server with live view

• Even if the trap is not airtight, I will add a few air holes in the cover.

Last Words

No animals were harmed during these tests. In the trap is always enough food and water for the mouse until it got released. All the mice, I had caught, are free again and on their way home.

Thanks for your interest!