MouseAir Makes The Cover of Raspberry Pi Geek Magazine

The SwitchDoc Labs 3D Printed Version of MouseAir has made the cover of Raspberry Pi Geek Magazine.  MouseAir detects the cat, loads a furry fake mouse in to a launching slot, fires a servo and then launches it in the air by using quickly rotating motors.  Four servo motors, two DC motors, a pi camera, and an ultrasonic detector all controlled by a Raspberry Pi connected to a to a control panel built with the RasPiConnect App as seen below.

 

The article in Raspberry Pi Geek Magazine talks about the entire design process for MouseAir, including the 3D Printing design.

 

Brit+CO has named SwitchDoc Labs rather whimsical 3D Printed project MouseAir as one of the most 15 creative Raspberry Pi projects. We are number 15 on the list, but still we are very honored. The Cat is especially honored. And hopes we will build more.

https://www.brit.co/raspberry-pi-projects/

 

Here is tutorial for building RasPiConnect control panels.

 

And a video of the device in action:

The Mouse Air project has been around in various stages since April of 2014. The goal of the project (conceived in a bar, the Fedora in Coeur d’Alene Idaho and named by Sarah, the most excellent bartender there.  And some BlueMoon Beer.) was to be able to detect a cat walking by and fire a mouse.  It worked!  The first version was physically large and complex, but fun!  We had so much response (including the response from the Cat) to that article and project from a variety of sources, that we decided to do a redesign of MouseAir incorporating what we had learned from the project. We aggressively redesigned to eliminate unneeded hardware and drive down the cost and size.  The 3D Printing of the box was a big undertaking because we had to learn the whole technology.