Has anyone tried "smart pet entry management"? Trying to stop strays from sneaking in

Hardware
1

I set up a pet door so my cat can come and go freely, but now strays from the neighborhood keep sneaking in — eating my cat’s food, taking over the cat bed.

Tried a few approaches:

  • RFID collar tags: In theory, each cat wears a tag and the door only opens for recognized IDs. Problem is RFID range is hard to control — sometimes a neighbor’s cat gets close enough to trigger the door
  • Camera recognition: Tried using image recognition to tell my cat from strays, but lighting changes and angles cause too many false negatives
  • PIR sensors: Can only detect “something moved,” can’t tell who it is

The ideal setup would be: the entrance precisely identifies “this is my cat” vs “this is a stray,” then controls the pet door accordingly.

I’ve been reading about UWB technology — each pet wears a tag with a unique ID, and a sensor at the door uses UWB ranging to identify who it is. Theoretically way more accurate than RFID, and the detection range is much more controllable.

But honestly, I haven’t seen a mature solution for this yet. A few questions:

  1. Has anyone built something similar for pet entry management? What approach did you use?
  2. Multi-cat households — how do you tell your cats apart in automations?
  3. If there was a solution that could accurately “only open for your pets,” would it be worth setting up?
2

I think you’re looking for a smart cat flap - there’s actually quite a few of them by now, and we recently got one. After a little training, our cats do actually like they can come and go whenever they please…

(…or, if you’re inclined, the schedule lets them)

Products:

  • OnlyCat
  • Sure catflap Connect
  • Zeromouse (addon to existing flap)
  • probably a few others I can’t recall right now…

Our cats have chip implants - and that works pretty well with the OnlyCat flap - only downside on that one: expensive af, right now basically cloud only, but has a HACS integration.

3

I have a SurePet Catflap, 4 cats. They have no issue and in fact they are in and out all day. Works with Home Assistant. What more can I say? Other than I have converted mine to run on a permanent 6v supply.

4

You’re really adamant on this UWB thing, aren’t you? :rofl:

Have you actually tried these approaches, of did you copy & paste them from AI? Asking because this

and this

are contradictory.

If your cat flap is opening for any RFID in range, it’s either not programmed correctly, or a huge security risk & crap product overall. It doesn’t mean that the technology behind it is bad.

5

Why the range should be controlled?
Decent range with rfid / nfc should be all you need.

6

I’ve had a SurePet catflap since before I had HomeAssistant. Here in NL, it is common for cats to have subcutaneous RFID chips anyway, in case your cat gets lost and is found and brought to an asylum or vet. The flap just recognizes that. It is not connected in any way but it doesn’t need to be. I do not feel the need to make history graphs of when my cat enters and leaves the house.