Cats usually sit outside a window or a door waiting for their owner to let them inside the house.Arkaitz Garro, A software engineer from Holland, wanted to make his cat’s life easier by making him wait less outside the door. He developed a gadget which has a camera attached to it and runs motion-detection and image-recognition AI software. The gadget can automatically recognize his cat and sends him a message to let the cat in.
Garro said, “We wanted to be notified when he was around so we could open the back door for him, as we don’t have a cat-door. When it detects movement, it sends the picture to a recognition software, that checks against the identity of the cat based on previous imagery of the cat.” When the software is certain that it is the correct cat and not anyone else’s, or any other animal, Garro receives a push message notification on his phone.
The whole setup costs only $50 and took very less time to assemble. He said, “It’s almost one hundred percent reliable when the cat is looking at the camera.” He used a Raspberry Pi mini-computer which had a camera module mounted on it along with motionEyeOS for motion detection. All of this is then attached to Amazon Web Services’ Recognition AI software which is used for the image recognition. The notification he receives is sent through the Slack messaging app.
If you think that Garro’s pet facial recognition software requires a lot of work then you can build a pet recognition device that was developed by Microsoft. This DIY IoT device was released in 2017 and attaches to the pet door to let animals come through the door. When the facial recognition device matches the pet to the database, it lets the animal pass through the door. Simple yet very convenient for you and your pet!
