About: I love combining software, electrical, and mechanical engineering to come up with unique and fun projects. I'm not a chef, but love to cook. Follow me on http://manganlabs.com and http://twitter.com/@manganla…

In this Instructable I'm going to show you how to build an "Internet of Things" (IoT) live animal trap.

Live animal traps are nice if you have pests to rid your home of but you don’t want to do it through a means of killing the animal.

The problem we are faced with is constant monitoring of the trap. If you forget to check back frequently (usually a couple times per day), you risk having the animal die in the cage simply due to shock or anxiety. As a result, you end up being more cruel to the animal than if you had just put it out of its misery to begin with!

It is this problem that spawned my “IoT Critter Trap”.

This trap will connect locally to a defined WiFi network and send an SMS message when the trap has been sprung. You can see what happens when the trap is sprung by viewing my demo video. This is a very simple solution requiring very minimal hardware and nearly all of the code is simply copy & paste.

My number one goal is simplicity so anyone can build their own with minimal experience or effort. I believe I have accomplished that, but you can be the judge.

Interested? Read on...