How can I communicate with my Cat when I’m away from home?
How could technology be used to help facilitate this interaction? What if I was able to use the cats natural instinct of hunt and play as a communication tool? Would my cat also be able to communicate to my friends cat? These are the questions that started me to explore what I call Cat Calls, a social cat toy.
After mapping the human/cat experience, Twitter was chosen as the communication device between Bikki (my cat) and myself. I setup a unique user account for each toy and one for myself. Once we all followed each other, I was able to send a direct message that would make a specific toy move. If Bikki was playing with one of the toys she would Tweet out to the world "I'm playing" and I and everyone following her would see her post. On top of that a hashtag was add to her post which would trigger the motion for all the other toys to move, incising other cats/friends/followers to play as well.
I used a Spark Core and node.js for the brains of the toys and wired up a battery, motor and an accelerometer for one toy and a tilt sensor (which actually worked great at a quarter of the price) for another. All that was fit it inside a cage I modeled in 3d and then printed. My next step for this prototype will be to skin the toys to give them personality and style.
