My wife is about to cave and let me get the cat I really want . But she wants the cat to use the litter box in the garage. She wants one of those cat doors that sense microchips to keep the other cats out of the garage. Would it be possible to rig something up so that if the cat is in the garage, one of the garage lights outside turns on a certain color? We tend to use the garage door more than the front door, and don't want any accidental escapes.
Yes. We have the SurePet (f/k/a SureFlap) Pet Door. It senses the chip in our cats and uses an integration ported to Hubitat by Dominick Meglio (@dman2306). Works well, installs via HPM. For us, it opens onto our enclosed patio, and turns on a light on the patio at night if either of the cats is out.
You will need to get the SurePet WiFi hub in order to use the integration with Hubitat.
Here is the door:
https://www.surepetcare.com/en-gb/pet-doors/microchip-pet-door-connect
Here is the integration:
Here is the simple Rule:
Here is what it looks like:
And, I might add, seriously consider getting a Litter Robot 3 Connect, which also has an integration ported to Hubitat by Dominick Meglio (@dman2306). It will change your life. I have a set of rules inspired by Jared Zimmerman (@jared.zimmerman) that turns our bathroom undercounter lightstrips green, yellow, red depending on the litter level, and that flashes if an error condition exists (needs emptying, fault, etc.). I put a contact sensor on the litter drawer, and a rule resets the cycle counter if the drawer stays open for over 90 seconds (as happens when you change the litter bag). No need to ever use their foolish app.
No problem. I built one that works for my cats, but I wanted it to work with the dogs. Scaling the door up to accommodate the dogs meant the antenna was larger. My problem was that the size of antenna in the microchip is small, so with a larger antenna, I would need more power to trigger the chip. I never got it to be reliable and safe for the dogs.
