Smart Doorbell for Cats with Home Assitant
Create a Smart Doorbell with a pressure mat and the Aqara
Hey Nerds 🤓
This year in January we got a new owner of the house we are living in. Luckily, she lets us live here. Her name is Chili 🌶️
Anyhow. She is an outside cat and when we adopted her, the organization checked our living situation and we had to let her go outside. Not a problem. But we can not install cat doors. First, we are renting, second, we have big glass windows. We always have to check manually, if the cat wants to get back inside. And I do not like to do things manually if you can automate them 🤖
Then we were visiting my grandparents and they had one of those pressure mats that made a CRAZY loud sound when their cat sat on it. I did not want to get a heart attack 💔 every time that thing goes off.
So, I looked at the device to see if I could integrate it into Home Assistant without the LOUD alarm.
Turns out, it is a simple on-off switch. Since this will need to be outside I picked up another Aqara Water Leak Sensor on the used market, wired it up and voila, it works!
After a couple of months, the cable broke and I decided to do it a bit more properly. That means with hot glue and a project box I had lying around:
Every time, when my cat now is sitting on this mat, the lights in the living room flash, a light on the window will also flash (as feedback for my cat) and I get a notification on my phone.
It is not perfect though. My girlfriend likes to put stuff on that mat while gardening and it is our entrance door in the summer as well.
Also, we sometimes have other cats parking there while Chili is in the house:
I think this is a neat little project, useful, and does not require any tools other than a screwdriver, something to clip the cables, and some hot glue (you can also go with tape).
It also shows how useful and versatile these Aqara Water Leak Sensors are!
You could even pair this up to my PokyPow to turn on or off your PC when someone steps on a mat.
I do not know why you would ever do that, but you could. And that is reason enough for us home automation nerds 🤓
Affiliate Links
If you want to build this as well, here are the parts I used. To be transparent: I get a small commission from these links.
Amazon United States 🇺🇸
Amazon Germany 🇩🇪
Have a great day! 🌅
