Because you want to keep your cat from going in/out at certain times or what?
We just have one of those chip-enabled flaps so it only unlocks for our cats. 100% offline with no cloud connection whatsoever. I personally don't really see any benefit to remote locking/unlocking the flap, if I wanted to manage when my cat can enter/leave the home I wouldn't have a flap.
We don’t let our cats out at night so it would be great to have a cat flap that knew whether each cat was in the house or not and could either lock the flap or lock it on in-only at a certain time of day.
You can at least get the who's in/out with a pair of cheap cameras (one inside, one out) and the frigate add-on. Set up for cat detection it's fairly decent:
If you build up enough images of your creatures, you could even train a model to recognise them each specifically.
Another user helped me out by sending me a Sureflap.
You can still integrate this into homeassistant - just need to buy in a particular esp unit and contact Peter on the homeassistant forums (see thread) for the firmware.
We're all set up now:
The OnlyCat flap looks very nice, but the price is insane & the online requirement is a deal-breaker. Even the non-sub option requires activation online afaik, so that's just no.
I used to have a surepet catflap. Unfortunately it is cloud based, but it worked pretty well most of the time. It has pretty detailed logs and can set things like curfew times via nextcloud home assistant
I think, there is a hack to get it to run locally, but I didn't try it.
The one that has the little hub with the light up ears?
Last I heard the local workaround was updated out of the software and that one dev had taken their project on it private, due to the manufacturer actively working to make it difficult.
Insane price to buy new, and have been getting a kicking in the reviews for poor function & support. I was considering, because it would be nice to have in HA, but all the above has put me off it.
Will probably end up with a standard chip reader flap and continue to rely on cameras for IDing who's in and out. All I'd want remotely is a way to force an unlock, for dealing with any failures to open. Could maybe mod that in.
21 replies
Please don't let your cat outdoors without supervision. It is devastating for both the lifespan of your cat and your local ecology.
What features are you looking for?
Individual cat sensor, remote locking, open detection?
"Yes".
I'm hoping to get some feedback on what features are worth having from cat owning Home Assistant people.
what information are you looking to get in to HA from the cat flap?
Lock and unlock control and status mainly.
Because you want to keep your cat from going in/out at certain times or what?
We just have one of those chip-enabled flaps so it only unlocks for our cats. 100% offline with no cloud connection whatsoever. I personally don't really see any benefit to remote locking/unlocking the flap, if I wanted to manage when my cat can enter/leave the home I wouldn't have a flap.
We don’t let our cats out at night so it would be great to have a cat flap that knew whether each cat was in the house or not and could either lock the flap or lock it on in-only at a certain time of day.
You can at least get the who's in/out with a pair of cheap cameras (one inside, one out) and the frigate add-on. Set up for cat detection it's fairly decent:
If you build up enough images of your creatures, you could even train a model to recognise them each specifically.
That looks good. The current cats look very different from one another so I reckon that we’d only need three pictures to train it.
Hey,
Another user helped me out by sending me a Sureflap.
You can still integrate this into homeassistant - just need to buy in a particular esp unit and contact Peter on the homeassistant forums (see thread) for the firmware.
We're all set up now:
The OnlyCat flap looks very nice, but the price is insane & the online requirement is a deal-breaker. Even the non-sub option requires activation online afaik, so that's just no.
I used to have a surepet catflap. Unfortunately it is cloud based, but it worked pretty well most of the time. It has pretty detailed logs and can set things like curfew times via
nextcloudhome assistantI think, there is a hack to get it to run locally, but I didn't try it.
The one that has the little hub with the light up ears?
Last I heard the local workaround was updated out of the software and that one dev had taken their project on it private, due to the manufacturer actively working to make it difficult.
Insane price to buy new, and have been getting a kicking in the reviews for poor function & support. I was considering, because it would be nice to have in HA, but all the above has put me off it.
Will probably end up with a standard chip reader flap and continue to rely on cameras for IDing who's in and out. All I'd want remotely is a way to force an unlock, for dealing with any failures to open. Could maybe mod that in.
That sounds too bad. I have not used it in more than a year. When I bought it like five years ago, it was pretty much the only option...
If you still have it, it may still be useful to a dev - especially if it's been off the net and not updated.
I can't find anything else today with the same features at least. A shame it's unfriendly to open standards.
Unfortunately, the Pethub local project seems dead. Also, I think that my version is already too new.
I guess if somebody wants to try and hack into it, I could send it to them... At least within the EU.
I'd have taken you up on it, but half my country are morons and dragged us out of EU.
Actually, if you want to pay for shipping, I can gladly send it to you. PM me if you're interested.
You're a gem - messaged.
Via Nextcloud? Random. I was hoping for Home Assistant integration.
Sorry, i meant to write home assistant. That's what I get for writing something when I'm too tired.
Haha, I was getting really confused. Nm, we all have brain farts sometimes.