USB powered cat toy
Cat - a friend of the programmer. Nevertheless, the cat is also a predator, and requires daily hunting. Two predators live in our family, so we have to play with them even more.
In the old-fashioned way, it’s inconvenient to play with the cat as a sunbeam in the age of high technologies, because programmers often sleep during the day and work the other way around at night. Comes to the rescue of an ordinary Chinese laser pointer for 40 rubles, bought for the occasion in a radio store. Cats feel like real hunters, diligently cutting circles around the room behind the red dot at any time of the day.
The laser pointer is powered by 3 watch batteries 3 x 1.5V = 4.5 V. If cats hunt for half an hour a day, the batteries last for a week or two. The batteries themselves are cheap enough (up to 4-5 rubles each) per unit, but the need to constantly buy and change them makes you think of something.
')
As a power source, which is always at hand from the programmer, it is convenient to use a USB port. If you cut any USB extension cable, then there will be 4 wires inside it: red, white, green and black. White and green are used for data transmission and will not be required for laser pointer operation. Black - earth, red + 5V. We disassemble the pointer, we hook up the wires.
The old dead battery in this case is simply pushed into the case, in order to fix the black wire. Unfortunately, there was no flux for soldering to aluminum at home, I had to make a hole in the case and just screw the red wire.
We roll up the tape and get a completely finished toy for animals. Since an unnecessary two-meter USB extension cable was used as a wire and connector, it is not necessary to sit next to a computer.
Cats played enough, all good night! :)
In the old-fashioned way, it’s inconvenient to play with the cat as a sunbeam in the age of high technologies, because programmers often sleep during the day and work the other way around at night. Comes to the rescue of an ordinary Chinese laser pointer for 40 rubles, bought for the occasion in a radio store. Cats feel like real hunters, diligently cutting circles around the room behind the red dot at any time of the day.
The laser pointer is powered by 3 watch batteries 3 x 1.5V = 4.5 V. If cats hunt for half an hour a day, the batteries last for a week or two. The batteries themselves are cheap enough (up to 4-5 rubles each) per unit, but the need to constantly buy and change them makes you think of something.
')
As a power source, which is always at hand from the programmer, it is convenient to use a USB port. If you cut any USB extension cable, then there will be 4 wires inside it: red, white, green and black. White and green are used for data transmission and will not be required for laser pointer operation. Black - earth, red + 5V. We disassemble the pointer, we hook up the wires.
The old dead battery in this case is simply pushed into the case, in order to fix the black wire. Unfortunately, there was no flux for soldering to aluminum at home, I had to make a hole in the case and just screw the red wire.
We roll up the tape and get a completely finished toy for animals. Since an unnecessary two-meter USB extension cable was used as a wire and connector, it is not necessary to sit next to a computer.
Cats played enough, all good night! :)
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/91981/
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