My dog Penny is one of the best. She has the two critical commands of ‘come’ and ‘stay’ down pat so well that I can go for a run with her off-leash here in Denver. She’s gentile with our newborn baby, and she doesn’t destroy things. Her only issue is that she goes BONKERS for food. My wife and I have done a great job training it out of her when we’re around so we no longer have to worry about a cheese board sitting on the low coffee table, but I know she gets on the counters any time we are away.
I decided that it might be helpful to have a surrogate to defend the counters when she’s home alone. After the success of the Silent Laser Doorbell <link>, I decided that a Laser Dog Watcher could be similarly effective. Here are the features:
- Setup a Laser tripwire using the same mechanical system in the Silent Laser Doorbell<link>
- On a laser beam break, trigger the digital GPIO of a Raspberry Pi<product link> to play an audio file of me reprimanding her AND taking a photo with the Pi Camera<product link>. The audio file changes so it’s not always the same.
- There is a calibration knob to allow for various levels of ambient light.
- There is an ‘enable’ switch to disable the audio and photo features to allow the user to line up and calibrate for ambient light.
- If the first audio file doesn’t get her off the counter and reestablish the beam, it plays up to two more audio files before disabling itself. That way it won’t loop over and over in case the system was knocked out of alignment,.
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