NoPeeNow: Correcting Bad Kitty Behavior with Arduino

Imagine solving pet accidents at home by building your own DIY electronic device. First-year student Jingxuan "Susan" Zhang set out to do just that when she designed NoPeeNow to correct her cat's bad behavior. Using Arduino and ultrasonic sensors, the product detects where a cat is peeing and creates noise to frighten them away from that area, thereby changing the undesirable habit.

"It really bothered me that my kitty was peeing on the bed," Susan said of the motivational force behind her invention. "After I troubleshot everything I could think of and even took her to the vet, I realized she just had a bad habit. That's why I decided to create a device to help adjust her behavior and make my life easier."

Susan learned circuit building and coding while taking the first-semester course, Making Studio, taught by Becky Stern. "The next step for the project is to connect this device with the IFTTT to collect the cat's data," Susan shares. "This data will generate a report that will help the pet's host to understand their pet better."

For details on how to build your own NoPeeNow device, check out Susan's Instructables.com project page.