Automatic Litterbox Central

I know in Canada modifying hardware you own in perfectly legal, but I guess in the USA it depends on what the CG people are trying to protect WRT a lawsuit.
I think it could be succesfully argued that spare parts were not made available and therefore after the initial warranty you were left with no support, but to find your own alternatives.
Either way we are not looking at selling a CG clone and undercutting them, we are looking to develop just a new replacement board, which means you must have already purchased a CG at some point, so they cant be too upset - unless they are just about plain greed.
The other positive thing is that while C&D letters are cheap and have little or no impact, a backfiring lawsuit because of greed can really ruin their reputation, plus if they lose a lawsuit it will really open the floodgates on clones and cartridge circumvention.
For all of those cartridge circumvention followers http://www.pcworld.com/article/113190/p ... boost.html

When we go to recreate the cycles, we really need to look at the initial scoop. I just watched my CG pick up some solids and by pushing the granules for so long against the hand trying to get everything it smashed them into the hand grate where they became stuck or fell back through. Very little of the solids made it into the hopper and now the stench coming from my bathroom is horrible as it is cleaning itself with all the solids smearing. It could have been easily fixed with one or two passes to pick up the solids, then dump them into the hopper and go back for anything that is left, but trying to get it all the first time just make a mess of things.

This is not the first time it has happened, and although it doesn't happen every time, it does happen 3-4 times per week, and I always have to run it through a second cycle, not to mention the poo brownie smell that is created from everything not getting disposed of properly. I'm not happy at all right now with the CG.


The Arduino Mega is being purchased tomorrow! I'm tired of dealing with this cr*p, literally.

My CG does the same, it needs a quick scoop and dunk, then another scoop and dunk, my CG spends so long scooping that the pellets have pushed the brownies off the top of the hand.
Then my next issue which hasnt been dealt with here is that my Bengal has has brownies like marbles, they spend most of their time bouncing up and down in the hopper like a lotto machine. The impellor should really have been an archimedes screw type idea allowing crushing of brownies and draining of water.
Not sure how I am going to mod the impellor

Then the alarm goes off and wont quit until its powered off.... along with the smell of toasted brownies which gets sucked into the furnace air duct and distributed around the house.
The alarm needs to beep 5 times and quit, leaving just a flashing error light.

BTW: Do we have a list parts and replacements eg: for when motors or relays burn out ? I know the CG people categorically do not sell spares
Do we have any scrap CG boards we can start looking at ?

I found the relays, both the exact replacement and ones that are available in smaller quantities. The rest will be simple enough to scrounge up. Since the motors are reversible ac and not stepper, things got a whole lot easier. No luck on a scrap board yet though. May have to go forward without one.

Ideally would like a board to create a basic schematic and alternative solderpoints, it doesnt really stop us moving forward until we are ready to do the frankenstein thing and test out the arduino. nice to see it does wifi though and had a builtin webserver - this might be useful for configuration.

KE5AFU wrote:Here it is, the discussion of how to create a replacement control for the CatGenie.
Of course this is for educational and entertainment only etc etc legal info goes here....

So far we have 2 main thoughts of how to rectify the issues with the CatGenie.

1. Reprogram the PIC and upload new firmware
2. Utilize an Arduino and create a new board from scratch with display capabilities.

All feel free to chime in, What would you like to see in an ideal CatGenie?

Ability to use any type of cleaning liquid.
More control over cycle times, both complete cycles and individual cleanings.
Ability to do a quick wash.
Statistical data on usage. (could come in handy if cat is sick and vet needs to know) (RFID tags could be implemented for multiple cats)

What else?

I am leaning toward a different approach. Instead of a custom PCB in each Genie (some of us have a lot of Genies and limited funds...), I am thinking about replacing the existing controller board with a passive multi-relay board (for instance http://sigma-shop.com/product/8/eight-c ... rrencyID=1) and putting all of the control functions for "n" Genies in software on a PC, linked by WiFi, USB, Ethernet, Zigbee, etc. On the PC, you do everything in software to control an arbitrary number of Genies. This way, you can coordinate start times, program Genies in different zones to have different programs, etc. Once you move the control functions to software, you can do practically anything.

I would advocate doing something like this as an open source webserver-based Java/PHP/Perl program so as to make it platform-independent (there are more of us Mac people out here than the mainstream PC press would have you believe....)

As for features, I definitely would like an ability to program a given Genie to start at a set of specific times; cats do not operate on a 6 or 8 hour cycle. They have a feeding frenzy (leading to a pooping frenzy) after the humans get up in the morning, then basically sleep all day till the humans start fixing dinner, etc. They then are relatively dormant till human bedtime, then head for the litterboxes right after you are ready to go to bed

I would also like to be able to coordinate start times among specific Genies in a "cluster." We have three such clusters, where several Genies share a 15 amp circuit, and if you stage them so they are not all running the blow-dry cycle simultaneously, this works fine. Otherwise, you end up resetting the breaker pretty often.

I would like to be able to interrupt power and restart a selected Genie in Tech mode and run the various test modes from a laptop that I carry around to the various clusters when there are problems. Amazingly, Genies do not have a power switch or any sort of relay that can be controlled by 5V logic for doing this; I would like to add this capability and exploit it for diagnostics etc.

Finally, my other pet peeve is that there is no way to return a Genie to its idle state once a cycle has started. Sometimes you just need to abort a cycle.... this involves pumping out any liquid or poop that is in process, raising the scoop, and returning to state 0, even if the litter is left wet and grody.

I just found out about the new topic on this project, so I will look there in the future, but I think that a SourceForge project, separated from the litterbox-central page, might be a good idea. I am not knowledgeable about legal stuff, but I am sure that the Cat Genie lawyers have enough money to wear us down, whatever the legal issues (if any) may be....

Glad to see someone else getting involved, welcome!

First off, I second the Mac bit, I switched a year ago and am so glad I did.

On to the CG project though,

I think you may be worried a little bit too much about cost. The basic unit we have been proposing should cost less then the unit you posted.
Also the unit you posted, while it does have the necessary 8 relays, they are limited to 10 amps, we need one of them to be 20 amps.
Most people only have 1-2 CatGenies. From reading your previous posts, I understand you have a unique situation. Since the Arduino is capable of
performing the tasks you have requested, we should have no problem incorporating functionality for multiple CG's

PM me for the password to writeboard if you would like to get involved.

Ok so be it... honestly until we get a new C board programed, how hard would it be to program the rfid tags? I mean 1.5 out of my pocket instead of 15.00 each month is a heck of a savings......

Without investigating them, I would expect that they were chosen specifically not to be reprogrammed or the specific counter they are using is not resetable.
Reading the tag doesnt help, you need a writer and it just starts to get complicated, better off programming the PIC to ignore the RFID altogether and manually check the level of the sani solution.

You are welcome to give it a shot, I know many people would love to see something like that. Your initial issues will be finding a programmer in the 13.56mhz range that supports ISO 14443-2.
You said in your initial post that you just got the CG, give it a couple weeks and I think you will agree that the issues go beyond just needing the ability to use other cleansers.
I believe the CG is in need of a total overhaul and thus the point of this thread. I can however see a very large audience for simply being able to bypass the RFID.
Past precedent will show however that any attempts to commercialize such an option will be met with resistance from CG, so take it for what it's worth.
Some feel that there is not much of a real threat involved with that, and others are somewhat more cautious.
I personally do not know anything about RDIF other then the basic premiss of how it functions, perhaps others can chime in with more detailed answers.

Great news all!
First off, a big thank you. One of the members here has graciously donated an old processing unit. Now we can begin work without taking personal units offline.
Second, I posted the other day I was ordering the Arduino, I am waiting until tomorrow when SparkFun (an awesome site btw) is GIVING away $100,000 worth of products.
Yes, you heard me, giving away! $100 per household, but hey, that is more then enough to order the Arduino Mega and the prototype shield!
Check it out if anyone is interested, http://www.sparkfun.com

I have been programming PIC microcontrollers for over 10 years now and I would absolutley love to get a hold of the schematics for this thing. I have noticed that the board contains an ICSP header for in circuit programming of the microcontroller and I would like to try to reprogram it with custom software. If anyone can get a hold of the schematics, please PM me. I would be happy to take requests for the software in exchange.

Something to consider that the Cat Genie didn't implement...a dual solution dispenser approach vs the single solution dispenser.

I'd like to know if anyone placed a buffer between the RFID in the cartridge and the sensor in the unit or simply replaced the original rfid with success.

Relay:

http://www.taobao.com/view_image.php?pi ... Yjc4MWE%3D