Project Floofball: An Iot Hamster Wheel

Made by 8BitsAndAByte

About the project

An IoT Hamsterwheel made using a Raspberry Pi and a magnetic door sensor, to see how far my hamster runs.

Project info

Difficulty: Moderate

Platforms: Adafruit, Raspberry Pi, ThingSpeak

Estimated time: 1 week

License: GNU General Public License, version 3 or later (GPL3+)

Items used in this project

Hardware components

	Standard LCD 16x2 white on blue	x 1
	Magnetic Contact Switch	x 1
	Raspberry Pi 3 Model B	x 1

Software apps and online services

ThingSpeak API

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Laser cutter (generic)

x 1

Story

The final project is an IoT hamster wheel made with a Raspberry Pi, that tracks my hamster's runs in his wheel.

Full project video below:

Full project video.

I used a magnetic door sensor to track the turning of the hamster wheel, not only because it's very easy, but it also wouldn't hurt or kill my hamster.

Magnetic door sensor

A first working test version, attached to an old hamster wheel.

A first working test version, attached to an old hamster-wheel.

All attached to the real hamster wheel in Harold's cage, ready for a test run!

Test setup.

Harold testing his IoT wheel, he seems to like it :)

A lasercut box in progress, to hide all the wires and hold the LCD screen.

A summary of all the data collected so far. As you can see, it's not always very accurate, the sensor got stuck a number of times, creating records of +40km a day, but overall it's pretty neat!

The data collected by the IoT hamsterwheel.

Code

Project Files on GitHub

All the project files are available here.

Credits

8BitsAndAByte

We’re Dane & Nicole, two makers that create tremendously terrible tech, which we happily share with you on our channel! https://www.youtube.com/c/8bitsandabyte