Cat gps tracker

[Andrew_Rowe]

cat are notorious for not working well in home automation
please see this cat thread for reference (and a good laugh even if you don’t own a cat)

Monitoring a cat flap state - best way?

Hi all, I’ve been working on a small project to monitor our cat flap - i.e. whether the cat has gone out or come in through it. Using a couple of reed switches and magnets mounted on the flap, an ESP8266 reads the reed switches and sends a message over mqtt which Openhab (ver 2.4) picks up. The code on the ESP sends an “In” or “Out” state based on which direction the flap has moved. When the flap is in it’s normal position i.e. closed, there’s no state sent. I’ve configured openhab to read th…

here is my response in that thread quoted here for reference:

@Andrew_Rowe

I’ve now discovered that the cat likes to stick her head out of the flap - thus triggering the switch, but not actually go out

You know as soon as I read this thread, I thought, this may be one of the most difficult home automation tasks in the world.

TL:DR:
guy puts contact switch on cat flap
data doesn’t make sense
guy put video camera pointing at flap to see WTF
cat sticking head out flap but not going thru