
Cats, lasers and Raspberry Pi - viniciosbarros
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/cats-and-lasers-and-raspberry-pi-oh-my/
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asdfman123
I built this using an Arduino board once for my roommate's cat.

It played with it for a little while quickly lost interest, despite how much I
tweaked the randomization algorithm. (I tried stuff like truly random points,
random jumps, slow movement, etc. etc.)

I figured out that she played much longer when I did it by hand. I realized
that when I did it manually, I'd wait for her to catch the dot and then move
immediately, so I thought about making something that tracked where the cat
was, too, but never got around to it.

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ebalit
I think you might be able to detect that the cat caught the dot by identifying
an unplanned motion of the dot itself.

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asdfman123
That's an excellent point and it sounds very easy to implement.

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jrace
The problem is cats get no reward from catching the red dot. For some it can
be a stressful as they need to catch the prey. The key is top reward them with
a treat or toy once they have caught the dot.

Just like humans, endlessly chasing something that gives no rewards can lead
to undesirable outcomes and behaviours.

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mrlala
I get what you are saying, but one of my cats is really fucking lazy so the
only time she runs around is to chase the damn laser pointer. Yeah I guess I
could also give her treats. But she's so fat, I don't know if that's good
either.

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IMTDb
Well if a child loves to play mario kart with you, but very rarely plays mario
kart against the AI, the key takeaway should not be "I will lock myself in a
room to build a mario kart AI that plays like me". Just spend time with the
living creature if you love it.

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mrlala
My two offspring take up every breathing second of my life after my wife &
work.. cat comes after all that which doesn't leave much time.

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mattferderer
Side note: some dogs also seem to enjoy & request laser pointers.

We bought our pets a pre-built version of this for Christmas. They seem to
enjoy it randomly going off during the day when we're not around or busy.

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tzs
Side side note: Eastern gray squirrels, Steller’s jays, and assorted chickadee
and junco species completely ignore my green laser.

I expected them to chase it, run away from it, or at least look at it a bit to
determine if it was a threat, but no, I have not see any reaction at all.

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rckoepke
These are animals in the wild? I personally think that pets are generally
understimulated and more likely to respond to artifices like laser points.

Like how rats were shown to get addicted to cocaine/morphine and waste away
due to ignoring food/etc....when the rats were housed in tiny boxes with no
other rats to socialize with, and no objects/toys to interact with except for
the cocaine/opiate dispenser. However, when provided with a vibrant community
of other rats and a highly stimulating environment, rats seem to generally not
get addicted to narcotics:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park)

It's likely that for an animal which spends most of its time in an apartment
where most of the time everyone is either gone (at work) or sleeping, a laser
pointer is highly stimulating. For animals who spend their lives outdoors,
sensory signals related to predators, prey, food, habitat, companions, mates,
and enemies....could be much much more stimulating than a laser pointer.

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martin_a
Why do they use a Raspberry Pi for this?

Seems like some Arduino-style microcontroller for $2 could do this just as
well.

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tolqen
In fairness the Raspberry Pi is only $5 so it’s not like it’s a huge deal

