No matter how well trained pets are, they still have minds of their own. House cats, in particular, instinctively do not show signs of weaknesses or sickness and can follow strange behavior routines leaving their owners confused as to how to best care for them. The one tell-tale sign that a cat is sick or injured is a change in its normal eating habits, but such behavior patterns are a nightmare for owners to keep track of. In comes TracKat to save the day!
TracKat is a modular network of sensor tags that tracks when, how long, and how often pet cats eat and drink per day. Users are able to configure the sensor tags to best suit their particular needs – number of cats, food/water bowl placement, etc.
The project will involve designing a distributed embedded system to track two cats’ food and water bowl access and a web app to display eating and drinking habits over time. The system will feature a hub device and several battery-powered bluetooth sensor tags arranged in a multipoint-to-point topology. The hub will run a custom application to organize all gathered data and will host the web app to display said information.