Just made a laser sentry tower for my cats. Next up is adding some tracking so it can play with them by itself while I'm at work and after that I'm adding a Wi-Fi module and camera so that i can also play with them while I'm at work... I couldn't resist using a mouse to top it off 😂

@Floydian I've never heard of it. I was planning on making it shoot spring loaded foam darts but then all of a sudden I had 3 cats on my bed staring at it intently when I was testing the movement.

Very cool!!! Great idea! 😊

Won't they harm their eyes if stare at the laser pointer?

Been thinking of something like this for a while, but with a webcam and automated movement by tracking the cat.

@abhisheksuresh so far to my knowledge I have never seen a cat stare at a pointer directly they just chase the dot. I think humans are the only species that's dumb enough to continue to do something painful or uncomfortable until we injure ourselves 😅

@kurtr you are right but we never know.

I built one of these but dont use it anymore i got super paranoid that i might actually be very frustrating or eye damaging for them but hey im super pedantic about my cat 😂😂😂😍

@simpleJack lol I'm more paranoid about my electronics. I just found the first (near) fatal design flaw, since when I designed it I was thinking about lobbing a peice of plastic & foam across an office it can't look no more than 10° down... that means it's easily within my cats reach. Earlier it just got one of my cats excited so it leveled out a bit shining the laser straight past my cat who then think the laser was gone decided to attack the watching him hunt. It needs to only look down by live high up

My cat demands to have this new toy!

Bring the IoT

Heyy :p
Can you provide the skematics?
Btw what kind of motor did you use?

@GyroGearloose This project is hackery at it's finest - I never planned or knew I wanted to make it so sadly no schematics. Sorry bro.

The square base is a cheap upside down photo frame, the body is an upside down "butt buddy" ashtray and the turrent is the body of an old mouse.

As for electronics in the base there is a 5v stepper motor I salvaged from a old printer, that turns a gear on the vertical drive shaft in the base (also from the printer). Inside the mouse glued to the base is one of those really cheap generic 180 degree blue servo motors which controls the Y axis. It has a laser diode taped to its arm.

The controls are just a standard joy stick module. I just hacked together what ever I had to make it work so I doubt it will offer much guidance or be practical to recreate. But on the flip side when I made it all I had was a diode, a cheap servo and a arduino - I salvaged everything else, had fun & learn't a lot so just be creative, have fun and re purpose some stuff!

@kurtr Looks like one of my projects :D
That makes me wanna make my gun turret... but I know I need to plan and design that one...
Have another Idea, but I don't know how to do it... A target to score Airsoft and nerf hits. The problem is that the airsoft and nerf won't have the strength to push the larget and use something like a pushbutton... Would need something to sense the vibration of the plates, have any idea?

@GyroGearloose The best advice I can give you is to improvise and hack out a proof of concept before spending money or buying quality components - even if it's mocked out of card board.
I learn't an unbelievable amount making that little turret... I wanted to jump straight to building my "vision" of the ultimate toy and buy a bunch of parts. Fortunately I got impatient and built it that day instead. I had planned out every detail but forgot to cater for the gaps in my knowledge - I build with keystrokes not bricks.

There were (and still are) a lot of things I was wrong on and want to do differently. The tile angle was high, wires crossed rotating it. I've changed the drive from a shaft to a belt 3 times, now it's in peaces while I rebuild the tower with bearings for less friction. After that I will probably want it to move and respond quicker and have to learn about gear ratios because if I use a fast motor it will jerky starting & stopping...

One day It will be just right lol.

@kurtr why don't you just use a Servo motor?

@Gogeta70 because the stepper motor works very well for precision I.e I can pre-program co-ordinates for it to move to and it does a pretty good job accurately repeating it.

Also the only servo was the one limited to 180 degrees

@Gogeta70 Scarvaged stuff....
A good 360 servo costs money...
he did it without ordering anything.
So he used what he had...