fluxaxiom

Want to save someone some headache. This is one of the best ways to clean glass but dont do this on glass in your car unless your interior trim is black. The ink will stain lighter trim and impossible to clean windows without hitting trim. Found this out the hard way on a brand new car!

A great start for these projects! I subscribed on youtube. Here is a link to a frame and body I designed for this type of robot - https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2645682

Awesome! I wish I had found your project before I made mine. Would have saved me some time - https://www.instructables.com/id/CheetahBeam-a-DIY-Automatic-Cat-Laser-Toy/

Awesome! Glad to see people are making them.

I share your concern for the cats eye safety. I would be very upset if even one cat was vision impaired because of this device. Allow me to share my research with you on it so far - There are 2 factors that contribute to eye injury from laser, the power output of the laser and the duration of the beam hitting the retina. As far as power output goes, I wont argue here that it would be better to diffuse the beam or dim it somehow so I would appreciate any input on how to accomplish this. I have only achieved spreading the beam out with any diffusion material and this seems like it may increase the duration of exposure. So the second factor, and this is why I feel it is safe, is the duration of exposure. The beam is constantly moving, and it is very very unlikely to strike the cats retina ...

I share your concern for the cats eye safety. I would be very upset if even one cat was vision impaired because of this device. Allow me to share my research with you on it so far - There are 2 factors that contribute to eye injury from laser, the power output of the laser and the duration of the beam hitting the retina. As far as power output goes, I wont argue here that it would be better to diffuse the beam or dim it somehow so I would appreciate any input on how to accomplish this. I have only achieved spreading the beam out with any diffusion material and this seems like it may increase the duration of exposure. So the second factor, and this is why I feel it is safe, is the duration of exposure. The beam is constantly moving, and it is very very unlikely to strike the cats retina for more than the 1/4 second that is deemed safe. In addition to this the cats reflex time to look away would be far less than 1/4 second. That being said a little common sense goes a long way. The further the device is from the floor, the better. I will add a safety recommendation about reflective flooring and diffusion, and also that if you have a cat that is staring at the device instead of chasing the dot, maybe this device is not for that cat unfortunately. It would be better not to stress them out and give the device to someone else. I have tested on about 20 cats over the past year and there was only one cat that was trying to murder the device, and thats when I added a ceiling hook which solved the problem.

Thanks I'm going to post an update to the code very soon. I'll check yours out too.

Click on my user name and you will see button to send message. Sorry just dont want you to share any personal info in comments

Sure send me a message and we can work out the details.

I don't have an instructable on it sorry. So the range refers to the range of motion on the servos - unrestricted being 0 - 180 degrees (maybe your servos have more range). To test just make a simple sketch that puts your servos at 0,0 and align with one edge of your floor unless you want it to come up on your wall a bit. Then increase the servo position (first one servo at a time, then both) incrementally until you get to the other extreme of your space. I got to those numbers in the sketch through trial and error, but they are strange numbers because I am avoiding a staircase so my cats don't chase the laser off a cliff so to speak. Hope this helps -

https://github.com/fluxaxiom/Arduino_AutoCatLaserAwesome! I had built one of these a year ago, and my cats loved it. It is an excellent way to distract them when I'm trying to do work and they wont leave me alone. After they got a little bored with it I decided to expand the functions and add more variation. Check out my code on github if you're interested - there are functions to make the laser zig-zag, do circles, scan the room, boomerang, bounce, creep slowly etc. The code would have to be adapted to the RoboTurret but I'm sure some may be interested in taking things a little further. I also adapted a power regulator into a light bulb base so it can be screwed in my ceiling fixture (I wouldn't recommend this if you don't know what you're doing). So much better than the disappointing ...

https://github.com/fluxaxiom/Arduino_AutoCatLaserAwesome! I had built one of these a year ago, and my cats loved it. It is an excellent way to distract them when I'm trying to do work and they wont leave me alone. After they got a little bored with it I decided to expand the functions and add more variation. Check out my code on github if you're interested - there are functions to make the laser zig-zag, do circles, scan the room, boomerang, bounce, creep slowly etc. The code would have to be adapted to the RoboTurret but I'm sure some may be interested in taking things a little further. I also adapted a power regulator into a light bulb base so it can be screwed in my ceiling fixture (I wouldn't recommend this if you don't know what you're doing). So much better than the disappointing commercially available product which I won't name but you can find easily on google. Thanks for sharing!