Meowant Litter Box

Feature Requests
1

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.

2

You are most likely missing an authentication token in your HTTP requests. Pay attention to the client headers during your MitM.

1 Like
3

Any luck getting it to work?

4

Has anyone had any luck with this?

5

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. :slight_smile:

6

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.

7

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