Does anyone have any suggestions of a “smart” rat trap or mousetrap out there? I’m basically looking for something that’s very similar to a normal mousetrap or rat trap, but that will tell home assistant when the trap trips (rather than me having to crawl into the crawlspace every other day to check it).
In an ideal case, someone makes an off-the-shelf product that works via wifi (or BLE/thread/zigbee/whatever if lower energy is needed). The only thing I could find was a strange electric (“zapper”) trap which had a promising looking home assistant integration but has terrible reviews (doesn’t catch rats, batteries drain very fast, etc.)
Alternatively, a trap makes a pretty big thump when it activates; is there a simple vibration-sensing device that I could place next to or glued to the trap that will send a message when it gets a bit thump? Ideally it could be smart enough to not drain the batteries until it gets a severe shake (plus maybe a daily heartbeat check-in?)… but I could even conceivably plug it in if that’s what it takes…
I’ve not used this but looking at it as I have a Yolink hub / sensor network.
I’ve had the “unsmart” Zackwars bucket trap out for 3 years and only caught one mouse and saw where the mouse went initially so I foamed that in… Meaning I don’t think I have the mouse problem I thought I did…
Of course you could flood the space with infrared detection and cameras with face detection configured for ‘mouse’ and ‘rat’, or just buy one of those cheap cameras with rechargeable battery powered WiFi connection and move it around for a few days to see where they go and confidently place a baited trap and catch the critter, once and for all time.
Implementing a sophisticated computer solution for a one-off seems like overkill.
If you have a plague, the conventional form of attack is time proven - feed your cat a little less, and they may even bring the mouse to you (dead/live/stunned) as a token acknowledge gesture of your existence.
Ideally, the crawl space should be hostile to pests - no food or comfortable place to nest should be the goal. If so, they will find lodgings elsewhere.
Thanks @paulbates . At a quick glance that looks reasonable (though out of stock at the moment)! I haven’t used any yolink devices, but it looks like in order to use this I need to also:
buy a YoLink hub
Install the YoLink app, create an account, give them y contact info, etc.
Use that app to pair the trap with the yolink hub
Pair the yolink hub with Home Assistant via Matter-over-wifi
Mostly. I use the official yolink integration with the hub via Wi-Fi and not matter. I used it for several years on another platform before setting up HA.
It’s reasonably inexpensive. I have about 30 yolink devices. The LoRa coverage is really good. The timing y so handles notifications will but I send all my notifications to pushover.
Semi-related application…
I have two rodent (Gopher, Mole, Vole, etc…) traps that have provided excellent results. I stuck Aqara Vibration Sensors on them and tied them to a notification script in Home Assistant. I love sitting there watching TV and getting a notice on screen that one of my “Gopher Getters” has been triggered.
