Inspiration
In field biology experiments, it's not uncommon to have a number of wild mice running around a large space. This puts them in their natural habitat; however, catching a specific mouse to check their health or perform an experiment means running around for hours, trying to catch anything that moves or catching (and stressing) many untargeted individuals. Here, we've made an automatic RFID mouse trap that shuts a door, if it's the right mouse.
How it works
We use an RFID reader at the entrance of the feeding tube to identify individual mice. An Arduino controls the trap door, knowing which mouse it wants to catch. In order to specify which mouse we want, we send identification information to the Arduino remotely, over a SparkCore. If the right rodent walks into the feeding tube, the trap is shut, and our scientists can go pick her up.
Challenges I ran into
We rapidly constructed a prototype without the SparkCore, and everything worked great. Adding the SparkCore, our servo stopped working - the Arduino wasn't capable of supplying enough wattage to power-hungry components like the SparkCore and a solid servo. Without a second, dedicated power source, we opted to add a second Arduino. In the future, we'll replace this with a dedicated power supply.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
We custom-designed, laser-printed, and built the feeding enclosure. It has a sliding floor, underneath which all of our electronics are housed. This makes it easy to make modifications - we don't need to pull the whole thing apart, just to pull out the sliding floor, to gain access to our components. We also feel this mousetrap provides a great solution to experimentalists, who can update the target mouse ID from anywhere in the world using their mobile phone, just sending a quick order to the SparkCore.
What I learned
This was our first time using the SparkCore, and the very first electronics project of half of our team. We learned a great deal about designing projects - from the first circuit diagrams on paper, to the final, beautiful prototype.
What's next for Mousetrap
Mousetrap needs to be made weatherproof and a little more robust, to avoid the mice chewing through anything. As a proof of concept, it does a great job; the next steps are to improve the design a little and move towards production !
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