I’m looking to potentially train my dog to press a button to alert us that he wants to go outside. I’m not considering a dog door at this time for reasons mostly related to climate. The Fibaro item, The Button, checks all of the buttons on paper, but reviews aren’t great–apparently, responsiveness is an issue after the button goes to sleep. Criteria for a hardware button:
Z-wave or WiFi (might consider Tuya or Shelly?)
easy for a dog to bonk with his nose
battery-powered with reasonable life
aesthetically pleasing (WAF)
I don’t currently have any Shelly or Tuya devices, but might be willing to implement for the right button. I’m not using ESP-32 devices, either, and not willing to explore that at this time (mostly due to what I expect will end up looking like a franken-button).
Does anyone know of any off-the-shelf hardware that might work?
I have been using 2 shelly button 1’s since they first came out, over that time they have become far quicker to respond and the battery lasts for months. One gets 2 presses a day normally and easily manages 3 months or more on a charge, never missed a press.
This answer is not about how to solve the “button problem” but to inform you that it can be consequences when you have teached the dog what the button is for…
Some years ago me and a ex girl friend had a dog and I thought it would be a good idea to teach the dog to pull a string attached to bell when he needed to go out.
He learned it really fast.
The problem that occured was that whenever he was bored he went to ping the bell.
The bell rang many times every day…
So we had to remove it.
