Sunday, June 03, 2007

Shower-o-matic (Feline Edition)

We've been having a very bad problem with cats. They use our backyard (and the front garden to some extend) as a litterbox. Some of the cats are now worse than dogs: A dog will usually pick a spot somewhere on grass, which makes it easier to clean, but some of these cats are now defecating on the open ground. Of course their feces also smell a lot worse than those of a dog. If you've actually step in one of these landmines by accident it makes you want to resort to Rat Poison. Which I've seriously considered.

But I'm not trying to start a war here, so I devised the shower-o-matic (feline edition). This is based on similar contraptions available from various vendors on the internet. Unfortunately nobody sells them locally, so I built my own.

The basic idea is a PIR detector, that operates a valve, which allows water to be sprayed over the protected area. For the PIR part, the least expensive waterproof device I could find was in fact a security sensor light. This is then wired via a 24V transformer to a garden variety (pun intended) irrigation solenoid valve. A piece of hose and another centrally located garden variety sprayer completes the setup. Some pictures: