1. Principles and practices¶

This week I worked on defining my final project idea and started to getting used to the documentation process.

Research¶

I’m a petrolhead so I’m always working on projects around cars, but this time I’ll make something different.

A enhanced self cleaning litter!¶

I’ve cats at home and 10 years ago I’ve bought a very useful object: a self cleaning litter called “Litter-Robot”.

In 10 years, I’ve changed many parts to keep it working but the controller board is not reliable, I have to change it every 2 years. Finally, last year when controller die again, I change for the new version “Litter Robot Open Air”. I haven’t problem at this time but I’m not very confident…

More details can be found here : https://www.litter-robot.com/the-litter-robot-ii-classic.html

A movie form youtube of how it works normally (not mine because my litter doesn’t work anymore) :

How ?¶

I’ve kept my old litter and try to find which component always failed but it’s a long work to reverse engineering this card so I’ve decided to make a useful project, create an open source version of this litter.

I will keep the structure and motor (I’ve changed it 2 years ago) because it’s still functional. There’s also sensor to detect cats (load sensor, anti pinch, hall effect for the rotation) I will reuse if they still work after testing.

I will create a new electronic board, a new control panel and had some fun/useful stuffs like online alerting when waste drawer is full.

My old litter robot :

Old useless controllers :

Project diagram¶