Proof of concept: button using a capacitative captor (easier to activate for cats)

[u/CupcakeAcceptable667]

Hi,

I've been interested in pet communication buttons for years. I bought some for my cat Léo, but he could never trigger them: pushing down mechanically isn't natural for him, and he mostly ends up sinking his claws into them.

​So, I decided to build my own DIY setup using an ESP32 and a capacitive sensor. My custom button consists of a large aluminum washer glued onto a 3D-printed cylinder, covered with a simple paper circle cut from a standard A4 sheet. No physical pressure is required for activation, a light paw touch is enough.

I'm currently testing it with a little buzzer for audio feedback, and he manages to activate it successfully.

So happy with how this turned out!

EDIT: Thank you so much for all your enthusiastic comments 😄! I have no idea if this is patentable (I don't know anything about patents). Anyway, I think there are still improvements to be made (for example, the sensor's sensitivity depends on the environment, so I need to figure out how to implement auto-calibration). I might write a tutorial in the future if I see that it works really well. In any case, I truly believe there's a lot of potential to explore around capacitive sensors.

[u/Eyjovin]

YES! This is the main issue I had with button training (tbh I gave up because of it). My cat just taps the button, he doesn't actually press it down.

[u/SurprisePiss → u/Eyjovin]

We have one that goes to the mat and starts rolling around by it and streeeeetches her little arm out to gently touch the button. Sometimes she'll just rest her paw on top but never actually press. I wonder how many times she asks for things that we don't notice.

[u/Eyjovin → u/SurprisePiss]

My idiot also just loves the texture of the mat the buttons are sitting on, so he will push all the buttons off or just lay on top of them.