Introduction: Automatic Laser Pointer for Cats

Cats how someone can't love them? They are cute protect our house for rats but they are pet who love draw attention mainly when we are busy with your school tasks, housework, etc. those times we can't give them the so much deserved attention, but now your problems are over at lease part of them, I developed a easy to execute project to entertain them

Materials:

  • 2 Servo motors

  • 1 Laser diode

  • 10 Male pin header

  • 1 External power supply 7v to 20v (it is not recommended use the USB of the arduino because it can't deliver enough current that can cause malfunction in the circuit)

  • 1 Arduino Uno

  • 1 6x6cm(2.4x2.4 inches) perfboard

Tools:

  • Hot glue

  • Soldering Iron

Step 1: Assembly of the Servos

The pointer is an object of simple construction and execution, the first step is glue the two servos together, after that glue the laser on the second servo, for test purpose the laser was fixed with tow zip ties the final result will be like the image above

Step 2: Circuit

The goal here is create a pseudo shield using the males pins header to connect the perfboard with the arduino (the led in the image was used to simulate a laser diode)

Step 3: Software

Download the file below and open it on the Arduino IDE, the first thing to do is check if the laser's action area won't make the cats damage your furniture, to do this comment the line function and uncomment the action_area function this will make the pointer draw a rectangle this is the area that the laser will move, to change this area change the values in the lines: define LIMITE_X_INICIAL , #define LIMITE_X_FINAL , #define LIMITE_Y_INICIAL e #define LIMITE_Y_FINAL after this comment the action_area function and uncomment the fine function, now the project is done