Because reading a radio signal from the chip was too easy?
this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
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We chose to put AI on a doggie door. Not because it is easy, but because it is hard.
Do those exist? Does seem like an obvious option.
Yes, they are really cheap and the law (here in Sweden at least) requires all outdoor cats to be chipped. So the cat is probably already chipped anyway.
Even if for some reason you didn't want to chip your cat (you should absolutely chip your cats and dogs) it would be trivial to just put a tiny receiver in something that dangles off their collar for the door to communicate with.
Why should you? As a non-cat owner, I am curious about the privacy implecations of it. Also the benefits.
You store your contact information on the chip. Then, if your pet gets out and someone finds it they can take it to the vet to have the chip read. Then they can contact you and give you your pet back.
You could, of course, have your contact details on their collar. But collars can come off or break. And if you're worried about privacy, literally anyone can just read the tag on your pet's collar. Most people aren't going to have the equipment on hand to read a chip.
Are they RFID?
They have existed about as long as RFID has been available.
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A tag with proximity around the neck has to be the simpler and more cost effective solution. Thats just dumb tech bloat bs.
But what if the neighbors cat reverse engineers the RFID signal and breaks into your house to steal all the cat food. What then?
If it can pull it off, it deserves the treats
Then humanity is over and the new master race of the technocats will rule the earth.
If it can do that, it can also wear a mask
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My pet door just reads their microchips. You can get a collar tag if they're not chipped.
Can you share your pet door link?
I'm not the person you asked, but I use microchip-based feeders for my cats and the company also sells microchip doors. I've been pretty happy with the feeders, but haven't had any reason to try the doors.
https://www.surepetcare.com/en-us/pet-doors/microchip-pet-door
I have two cats - one is allowed outside and eats all the food in sight, and another that’s indoor only and likes to graze, I have their smart feeder and smart cat flap, which allows me to control which cat is allowed to access what and at what time, setting curfews, and seeing if they’re in or out. Would recommend.
I have one of these too for my cat, and it works really well. Hasn't run out of batteries yet since I bought it several months ago. And it stopped the catfood thieves of the neighbourhoud entering my kitchen uninvited.
Don't hesitate to contact their customer service if you ever have problems with it. They've helped with things no other company would. For example, one of my cats figured out how to open the door when it was locked (they're not allowed back outside at night). I sent them a video of the cat escaping and they sent me a new, modified door that fixed the problem. I couldn't believe they did that.
Thank you!
90% of modern tech is just money laundering and insider trading.
Was just gonna say, I'm pretty sure that's existed for a while.
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Let me in Summer
Where are my testicles Summer?
Tell me, Summer, if a human was born with stumpy legs, would they breed it withanother deformed human and put their children on display like the Dachshund?
Negative
KEEP SUMMER SAFE
There’s not a chance in hell this is going to work to be able to differentiate between two black cats.
We had two black cats and Google and Apple photos both get them mixed up despite them being easy to differentiate for us.
Not to mention just how bad facial recognition is on two non-white people, let alone cats.
And even then, I found a cat in my last neighborhood that was a dead ringer for one of our black cats. Which was very confusing the first time he appeared into different places at the same time.
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I wonder how long it will take the local racoons to figure out holding up a picture or video of the owner's pet to the camera should suffice. Imagine that -- racoons lying-in-wait, with stolen cellphone, trying to get something good.
I think some guy did a HackaDay or Instructables about this a few years ago using Arduino. He got it to recognize his cat's face to keep out other neighborhood cats. But to give the software enough time to recognize the face, the cat had to go through a 3-ft tunnel. Our cat door is built into the real door, so I can't attach a tunnel to the outside. But our problem isn't the wrong cats coming in. What I need is to detect if the cat has something in its mouth like a rat, which they love to bring in alive to play with and immediately lose so I have to root them out. Our cats are dumbasses.
A few years ago I saw someone just simply checking for a cat head silhouette. Was enough to deter other animals and also worked to recognise if the cat had caught something.
We have a cat flap that detects the RFID chip in her shoulder. It seems to be broken since a few weeks. But our cat (and not the stupid neighbour's cat) can open it anyways with a little prying with her claw. But luckily that doesn't work as well when she has an animal in her mouth. So we will probably leave it broken.
Silhouette sounds like an interesting method, although I've never tried to figure out how to test with and without rat in mouth. Probably would just have to try it in practice.
If this could also prevent your cat from bringing in prey to your house, it would sell even better.
Bird in mouth -> door keeps shut
Cats from the same race tend to look very similar dont they?
Anyway, this is more interesting than more chat robots.
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Letting your cats outside unsupervised is a death sentence
For all the birds and mice sure for the cat, nah.
Disease and cars say otherwise
Let's not fight, it's bad for everyone to have a world class predator unleashed into a toxic and hostile ecosystem.
Yeah, people don't realize their cute derpy fur ball is a murder machine. Being a mouse must be terrifying. Imagine something the size of a T Rex that can sneak up on you with out much effort.
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