Making a smarter mouse trap

Why

I wanted a way to monitor my mouse traps under the house. Since I had just received the Photon from Hackster, I figured "why not?"

Logic

First thing I realized is that the useful parts of the mouse trap are made of metal. The arm and the pin are touching when armed, and when the mouse sets it off, they won't touch. This does rely on the pin not landing back on the spring, but I've found this to be a rare occurrence.

The build

I had some length of wires from a stripped Cat5 cable (who doesn't?) lying around, so I stripped the ends of one pair. One end was attached to the loops of the trigger and arm of the trap. The other ends of the wire are connected to the VIN and Pin 7 of the Photon. Polarity doesn't matter here.

I go into the Tinker mode on the Spark App, and I set up Pin 6 & 7 as Digital Read, since I connected a second trap to Pin 6. When I quick tap on it, I see the connection as "HIGH" which means the voltage is HIGH voltage, or VIN.

Now I Wait...

Results

I got up the next day and checked:

Well, this is the most excited I've been about checking mouse traps.

And... There you go.

Future

I'm trying to get get this to work with IFTTT and email me when the trap goes off. I don't think it'll be too hard, I just don't have it done yet.

I'm also planning on making clips for the ends of the wires so reload and deploy doesn't take too long.