Automatic Litterbox Central

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can someone please let me in on this?
-Derrick, owner of 3 cats and a constantly beeping CatGenie

Note - 56Effie removed his posts on his own and he was the one who asked others to remove their posts as well. I assumed it was PetNovations who asked people to remove the posts. I was wrong and underestimated their integrity. PetNovations does in fact appear to be well aware of their customer's rights.

What's with all the censorship? There are no laws being broken here. Everything 56Effie posted is 100% legal.

Note - 56Effie removed his posts on his own and he was the one who asked others to remove their posts as well. I assumed it was PetNovations who asked people to remove the posts. I was wrong and underestimated their integrity. PetNovations does in fact appear to be well aware of their customer's rights.

It appears PetNovations has strong-armed and bullied members here into removing their posts, despite the fact that they were all within their legal rights and 100% followed the standards of reverse engineering.

Not cool at all. PetNovations may not like it, but it is completely their fault that they decided not to include any security features whatsoever in their cartridge system.

As much as I love my CatGenie, PetNovations as a company has crossed the line, and has completely lost my respect. In fact, their tactics of bullying forum members here might actually be illegal in the USA. This company really has a lot to learn.

I plead to the administrators of the board to please restore the censored posts.

Wow, since the last time I was here, so many of the posts have been removed. What's up with that?

Just a couple of comments from a happy & successful "smart chip" reprogrammer :

I don't refill the cartridges. I run 'em with reset, empty cartridges. Water only. Works fine. No more cat smell than with the original sanisolution. I keep a spray bottle with simple green in it near the unit(s) and spray a few times every now and then while the bowl is full of water. (probably about every 10 washings) If you feel you HAVE to refill the cartridge, the easiest way is to turn it upside down and pull off the translucent white plug on the bottom. A hemostat works great to do this, but fingers and fingernails will work also. Use a small funnel to refill & don't forget to put the plug back in!

I get the read errors pretty frequently too and I agree it seems to be a connection/contact problem. Keep wiggling the wires around. I actually just insert the wires from the programmer into the tiny holes on the top of each "smartchip" contact. I was lucky to just happen to have wire of the exact size to fit nicely without pulling out too often.

The instructions from the eeprom programmer's seller, "kuzito" above on this thread are excellent. Copy them before they disappear!!! (And, BTW Kuzito, thanks, and your English is MUCH better than my ability to speak your language!!! ) I got mine from him/her via ebay, you can also go to sigma-shop.com to get one (I think it may be the same person?). I am also a dedicated mac user/windows hater, and I wish there were a mac OS compatible version. The little program seems pretty simple, but way beyond my abilities! Any mac programmers out there?

And WHAT'S UP with the removal of posts??!!?!?!???!? What is this, 1984? Nazi Germany? No, last I checked, it was the US of freaking Amerika. Guess that explains it. No more freedom of speech here. Geez. Leave your brains at the door.

Let's hear it for freedom of speech and freedom of tinkering!

--Former history major with too many cats. (wouldn't part with a single one, though!)

I happened to copy some of the most helpful posts & instructions, and am re-posting them. Let's see how long they last.

Thanks to 56effie (Craig) for the original info :


Here is some info about resetting the cartridge:
I posted the below text in another thread. I've included some pictures showing my setup. I built a jig to align the spring contacts "Ball point pen springs" on the proper pads of the cartridge for reprogramming. On top is the USB Eeprom programmer.

The CatGenie “Smart Chip” is a 24lc00 Serial Eeprom of only 16 Bytes. I used a USB Eeprom programmer to both read and write to the chip. There are 11 contacts on the front of the Cartridge. With the cartridge upright the left two Pads are Pin 5 on the Eeprom. Pads 4&5 are Pin 6, Pads 7&8 are Pin 7 and the far right Pads 10&11 are Pin 8. Using 4 wires I made the appropriate connections to my programmer’s socket. After that simple read and writes can be done using the programmers software. Very Simple! Below are two readings. The first is from a full cartridge, then again after one cycle.

New x xx xx 3C 3C 3C 3C 3C 3C xx xx xx xx xx xx xx
Used Once x xx xx 3B 3B 3B 3C 3C 3C xx xx xx xx xx xx xx
--Edited out useless info with xx

Note that the first one has 3C six times and after one cycle the first three changed to 3B. If you convert 3C from Hex to Decimal you get 60, 3B is 59.. Hmmm looks like a simple count down. Not sure what the other areas are, but I have some ideas.

Craig

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Any eeprom programmer that will read/write a 24xxx eeprom will work. If you want to get one like the one I'm using just do an Ebay search for "USB 24xxx I2C E-Eprom programmer" or go to sigma-shop.com. Make sure you get the correct one "24XXX"

A new USB programmer like the one I show in the pics cost about $40 new. The rest is just misc parts found around the house. example ball point pen springs and scrap wood. Well worth it in my book!

If you can wire it up your pretty much done. The rest is real easy. The eeprom programmer has a small program that you run on your computer. Connect the programmer via usb to your PC and connect the smart cartidge as described earlier in my first post. The first time you need to read a full cart. With it connected click on "read". Save it to a file named something like "Full". Then connect and empty one to the programer, Click on "load from file", select "Full.bin" and then click on "write" Almost as fast as you click the button it will say it is done. That's it. From then on you no longer need to read a full cart, just skip to the load from file and write to the empty one.

Craig -

Just a couple more simple questions...

What gauge wire do you recommend?

In comparing pictures of your programmer and the one from Sigma's web page, it looks like you have an extra something (sorry, I'm not up on the terminology here) where the wires connect to the board. See photos below. It looks identical to the part on the Sigma board, but is doubled-up for some reason. Is there a reason for that?

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That's just another socket... It's like plugging an extension cord into another extension cord...

If he soldered the wiring wrong, he wouldn't have damaged the whole board, just a $0.25 socket.

Common practice in homebuilt electronics. Also, it allows him to quickly detach the programmer/reader from the wood. Remove the board from the board. :p


Wire gauge should be unimportant. This is not carrying a lot of power. Look how thick the traces on the circuit boards are.

Note - 56Effie removed his posts on his own and he was the one who asked others to remove their posts as well. I assumed it was PetNovations who asked people to remove the posts. I was wrong and underestimated their integrity. PetNovations does in fact appear to be well aware of their customer's rights.

A couple of thoughts:

1) I would understand the removal of posts if it was done on a forum owned and/or operated by PetNovations. (Like a forum on catgenie.com.) The last time I checked, these forums were not owned by PetNovations.

2) I would understand (but not like) the removal of posts if there were security features implemented into the design of the cartridge that had to be "cracked" using proprietary software. (For example, the contents of the EEPROMs were scrambled and you had to unscramble them by downloading copyrighted code to "crack" the encryption.)

However, the chips on the cartridges have been shown (through reverse engineering) to contain no security or proprietary data whatsoever. They are just counters, nothing more.

To suggest that "reprogramming" these cartridge chips is illegal would be like saying that if you bought a watch with a battery, it is illegal and "hacking" the watch by replacing the battery when it died, instead you have to buy a new watch.

Again I plead with the board admin to restore the deleted posts. This is supposed to be a pro-customer website, not a pro-corporation website.

I'm pretty sure that everyone understands that reprogramming the cartridge and refilling it with non official solution is using the product outside of its recommended scope.