Hello. I’m building an automated dog kennel so my dog can (hopefully) feel more comfortable and stop pooping all over my floor at the sound of storms.
What I have right now is utilizing esphome in Hassio, I have an esp8266 with an ultrasonic sensor and a single digital RGB LED. When my dog sits or lays on the bed the ultrasonic sensor detects and triggers the LED glow. All these states are sent back to Hassio. Essentially if the LED is on the kennel is occupied. My original plan was to then cast a google play music album or playlist to a google mini mounted in the kennel, but that doesn’t appear to be as easy as I thought. I read you can trigger playing of a locally stored mp3, which could be white noise or music. Or at the very least I could have a white noise generator plugged into a zwave switch and trigger that on/off, but that seems less integrated than I’d like.
Can anyone think of an easy way to play music or noise when Hassio detects the kennel is occupied?
Yeah, I didn’t like this concept ether, even if you used load sensors, Dogs like quiet too, at least ours does. She doesn’t like anyone interrupting her snoring. And especially the white noise. (not universal)
Not being a dog-person I can’t really identify, but what’s not as easy as you thought about using a Google mini? I use my own to help me get to sleep with white noise and wake me up with the radio. Seems a bit of overkill for a dog though, unless you can train it to bark “Ok Google, Scooby Snack”.
I just looked it up and you’re correct, the ultrasonic sensor works at 40kHz and dogs can hear up to 100kHz. Thanks for pointing that out! I’ll switch to a PIR motion sensor.
My dog has intense anxiety during thunder storms. It’s pretty common from what I hear. He shakes, has panic attacks with incessant panting and crying and can’t control his bowels so has accidents on the floor. If we can get him somewhere that is quiet and play music he does better. Unfortunately we’re not at home many times that this happens and I’d rather not kennel him every day. My solution is to give him a quiet safe place with calming distractions until the storm passes. My hope was that by automating it he can choose to go there and I’ll get a notification on my phone that he’s there.
I can’t figure out how to have Home assistant trigger an album or playlist to be sent to a specific google mini. Do you know how to do this? I’d love to know how! Thanks.
I know it sounds weird, but our dog enjoys listening to Enya during storms. We found that out by accident. Unfortunately that alone doesn’t help him through, it’s just one piece.
I use Node Red with Home Assistant. What I’ve done in the past is create an event watcher for the Google Home that just dumps out the whole message. Then ask Google to play whatever (eg. oscillating fan sounds, or Enya) and grab the URL it uses. Then you can cast using that URL. In the case of a radio station, they did change the URL once, so it stopped working until I repeated the exercise.
Thanks for all the input. I’ve decided to build the automation off storm forecasts near our location instead of trying to figure out a “dog detecting” method. This way HA will watch the weather and prepare the safe space prior to the dog hearing the coming storm. When he gets scared or uneasy he can go in there to escape the noise. A time interval after the weather passes I can have the kennel return to normal. I hopeful it’ll work.
Hi @akajester, another option can be to get your dog used to these sounds by playing them, starting at a low volume, do that A LOT and VERY slightly turn up the volume - might take weeks/months.
Be aware of yourselves to stay calm all the time when there is real storm and not to comfort the dog because you make it worse doing so, since this acknowledges his state.
You could engage him in some kind of board game where for instance he has to move/slide things to get treats - in case he likes to do things for treats.
By doing this when there is no storm and getting him into this ‘game’ it might help when there is a real storm and he is distracted.
Another thing you can do is when there is a mild storm which might trigger him, go for a walk and keep him close to you so that he has to follow whatever you do.
This gets him in working mode and ignore the storm.
All this desensitizes him for a real storm.
HTH
And especially the white noise. (not universal)