Mouse trap

A bit of fun. Some cheeky mice have been visiting in the past few years, always in the kitchen. Various humane traps have been tried, some effective and some not so. It occured that there were a few micro processor chips in the parts bin that were not doing anything, so employed one to construct a mouse trap.

The mouse trap consists of:

A SR505 PIR motion detector
An Atmel ATtiny461 processor
A 6v 1a solenoid with a 6mm throw
A mosfet used as a switch
A 5v voltage regulator for the processor
A 6mm acrylic box
A 12v lipo battery

The PIR detector sends a signal to the atmel processor when a mouse is detected in the box. The angle of detection for the PIR is restricted by being inserted in a short tube. This effectively prevents false triggering by movement outside the box.

The Atmel processor then activates the mosfet which in turn supplies current to the solenoid, dropping the door.

Version 1 introduced some doubt as there was a mouse visiting regularly that just refused to be caught. It was thought the bait might be the problem but various changes didn't entice the mouse.The most effective bait seemed to be peanut butter, more effective than chocolate or cheese, but the last mouse remained at large.

It did occur that the scent/smell/odour of the previous captured mice may have alerted the last mouse. Or maybe the last mouse was a bit smarter than the previous ones.

A revamp involved a change of processor to ESP32, a simplification of the circuit and the introduction of a switch to make resetting a bit easier.

box constructed of 5mm acrylic.