Hopefully I’m in the right place. I just got the Meowant cat litter box and it is app controlled over WiFi. I would love to get this integrated, but I’m not proficient enough to develop it myself. I began finding the API calls with MitM, but when I try to send a command back it gives me an unauthorized status.
You are most likely missing an authentication token in your HTTP requests. Pay attention to the client headers during your MitM.
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Any luck getting it to work?
Has anyone had any luck with this?
I’ve now got not one but two Meowant litter boxes - love 'em so far, and the newly released SC-02 seems to be pretty much just a heap of improvements on the SC-01 which I already liked.
Anyway, I’m interested to collect data or at least event triggers from this thing into HA so I can e.g. prompt my kids when it’s (past) time to empty the litter catcher, or when it’s likely time to swap out the litter altogether.
Before we received ours, I’d SWEAR that I found somewhere that someone had actually written a custom component for these products, with the issue mainly being that the developer whose implementation I was looking at was a native Chinese speaker, and the comments and documentation were all in Chinese. Nothing too surprising about that – I believe these litter boxes have been released into Chinese markets before making their way into the US and other Western markets. Anyway at the time I didn’t really look any closer or attempt any translations etc.
I’ll do another check to see if I can scare something up… if not, then it does strike me that with the rotating drum setup it would be pretty straightforward to slap an NFC sticker on the side and mount a reader near the back, making for an easy way to check for & count cycles without any powered components mounted on the moving parts. But this oughta be doable.
Edit just to note: If you’re in the US – note that the SC-02 (which I think is the April 2024 successor to the SC-01) is priced remarkably low right now on Amazon. I think they may be temporarily offering it there at a reduced price point, until it gains some reviews / momentum in that marketplace. For reference the MSRP on meowant.com is USD $599; meanwhile it’s $399 on US Amazon as of this writing. I have zero affiliation of course and to provie it I won’t even post any links above. 
Well, a bit more digging turned up the following, nothing conclusive but perhaps it might help us find some shortcuts:
Who makes these:
- It appears that the Meowant-branded products here are rebranded versions of these originals: (Caution, most of these pages have amusing but loud promotional videos that auto-play after they finish buffering)
- 2024 version (rolls front to back): UBPET UCAT C20
- 2023 version (rolls sideways): UCAT C10.
- Pro Version (rolls sideways): C10 Pro that includes an in-box video camera. I am guessing this is mainly used to identify whether / which cat might be in there for safety & tracking reasons. Or, y’know, if you want to watch your cat doing its business in the litterbox, from your desk at work, without making it weird… for the cat? (This actually happens in the video.)
The above products are all made by UBPet which is a branch of UBTech robotics (ubtrobot.com). These folks make a wide range of stuff, from humanoid robots to assistive and industrial devices. They have a pet product line (UBPet) and also a home-cleaning product line (AIRROBO)
In the videos I notice that the litterboxes were occasionally labeled with Air-Robo branding – and the app for these litterboxes calls itself “AIR PET” but the iOS version of the AIR PET app specifically mentions that “AIR PET is an APP of AIRROBO”.
Meanwhile:
- I found this post where someone had basic success with a vacuum-related Tuya integration for least one of the AIRROBO vacuum cleaners.
- I also noticed from looking at these devices on my network that they are using MAC addresses typical of ESP32s.
So - I haven’t tried yet but I’ll sniff around using tuya-related approaches to see if these litter boxes might (under the hood) be tuya-ish enough to lend some traction with integrating. I’m not at all a Tuya expert however … but perhaps the above might be of help to someone who knows more than I do.
I’m currently eyeing up the ubpet c20, would a) love any feedback, and b) love some way to integrate this
Also anyone know if once set up it can be controlled locally? I’ve been burned before
I’m not sure this is for all of them but the LR02 uses a custom app, but is really just Tuya.
I’ve got mine integrated using LocalTuya.
Is this a safe automated cat box? I would love to have one on home assistant but have seen too many horror stories on these things. Some forums call them guillotines.
I use an UBPet C20 which I believe is the same as Meowant (tho I don’t see it in TuyaLocal)
It’s very safe. It only turns after no weight detected from the cat and is always open in any orientation, so worst case they can just jump out
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It is safe. The One Man Five Cats youtube channel that first released a video compiling the dangers of the boxes that cycle upwards has some excellent information available on what to look out for; the Meowant is nothing like the dangerous models.
I hate to necro an old thread, but in an effort to keep the discussion in one place, has anyone found out anything new on this? I recently got one of these, would be interested in getting this integrated.
Never found anything I’m afraid.
That being said, I have set up routines that work with it using Tasker on my phone - for example, our litter tray is in our utility room, so after the cat has used it, I get a notification, Tasker takes action based on that notification to push a command to home assistant and turn on the utility room extractor fan
Decided to pop it open, happy to see a familiar microcontroller inside, an ESP32-C3-Mini-1. I unfortunately know next to nothing about how to create things for ESPHome (but would be willing to learn!), but I did take pictures of both the front and back of the board if that may help anybody smarter than me. Seems like there are RX/TX pads on the back of the board, but are very small. Willing to open up a GitHub to throw these in if there is interest in contributing to this.
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I recently acquired a Meowant litter box. For whatever reason, I’m not getting “network error” trying to use the app. Not sure if the cloud service is down, or what, but that’s drawn me here. I hate things that depend on the cloud.
So now, I’m thinking about downloading the firmware off this sucker, and reverse engineering it, to make it work locally. But it’s a project I don’t really have time for, so I don’t know if I’ll do it. Also, it’s still in the 30 day return window, and one of my cats is afraid of it, so I’m not sure I want to disassemble it.
It’s good to know that it’s an ESP32. That gives some possibilities for reprogramming it. There’s quite a bit of logic that would have to be implemented, though, so it’s not going to be as trivial as, say, a controlled outlet.
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Do you happen to have a picture of the full board with connections?
this is the SC-01, last time I did a full cleanup, I took a few quick pictures to have an idea on what was generally there
didn’t know where to post them, so I put them on imgur (I don’t know how long they will stay there), but the forum wouldn’t let me upload more than 1
has 4 Hall effect sensor to sense rotation, 3 seen on the back of the main board (which is otherwise mostly empty), magnets are on the drum (3 lozenge shaped pieces), and a 4rd Hall effect sensor on a separate small board to detect the back cover.
I vaguely remember a sensor pointing in the middle back into the drum, which isn’t transparent, but not fully opaque either, so IR might go through ??
This is smilingly a spot for a camera (similar to a pi cam), and I guess those covers are replaced with transparent plastic when that model.
has a front mounted sensor, possibly microwave at the base front, which stops rotation when cat or human walks in front of it
four load cells on the feet connected to a small board with something similar to an HX711 ADC
an IR emitter and sensor to check/count gear rotation
board with buttons and led
and of course a motor
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That’s a lot more complex than I expected!
Yeah I was surprised as well!
But most if not all sensors are potentially just simple binary input, the load cell is the only one that wouldn’t be.
Motor is single speed, bidirectional, so likely connected to two relay/transistor for each direction, or sends a numerical value, which is then handled by another small chip?
Taking notes of the leveling and cleaning pattern, when the Hall effect sensors are triggered shouldn’t be too hard.
I haven’t played with load cell yet, but I assume there is a simple zeroing command, no idea if calibration is needed.
the main issue would be if the ESPhome is able to communicate with all of the sensors as is, or is the firmware more intricate.
And worse case ends up with a dud, as the stock firmware is not easily available, so that’s scary considering a replacement price, and only thing holding me back.
what could be done however that is safer, is in line with what people suggested, and add our own halleffect sensor (one should be enough for standard cleaning cycle detection, and likely figure out a way to filter the leveling cycle so that it doesn’t count), there is easy access to power there and lots of space, so a mini ESP32 board could be added in the back.
did a full clean again today, so opened the back once more
a few more notes:
a magnet close to the top hall sensor (one on separate small board where the camera would also be) is enough to make it believe the cover is installed and it believes the drum is installed (so doesn’t check the weight of the drum for drum presence)
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top middle connector goes to that Hall effect sensor that check for rear cover presence, extra wires are for powering a non existent IR light for the non existent camera.
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bottom right on my picture of the board is 12v input
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bottom left plug is direct power to motor, receiving 7.8v or “-7.8v” based on rotation otherwise 0v when not moving.
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the weight cells (the bigger of the two connector on the middle left side) could likely be used directly on a spare ESP32 (actually got an error mentioning the weight cell in the app as soon as I disconnected it)
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I think the micro connector on the middle left is the IR in/out (?) that goes to the large gear teeth
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the bottom middle connector is a ribbon that goes to the front buttons+led and likely the front microwave (?) sensor.
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