Project Guinea Pig Cage
Last modified: 09.12.2020
started: 28.05.2020
I built a cage for my children's two Guinea pigs. Their old cage is to small so this one needed to be bigger. I added a led strip to it. Later it would be fun to add some kind of automation.
Project images
Here are some images of the cage and the building progress.
The glass lights up nicely
I'm pretty happy with the result
Enough room now for the guinea pigs
Finished product
Later
Added stairs and a sky bridge
The plexiglass parts are here from the factory
Viewing the plan in Sketchup
My son Orri and his guineapigs
Pillars finally assembled
Gluing took some time
The corners
Testing if everything fits
Only pillars are glued here
Is as designed
That was a big relieve
Made room for wires and strip
and started drilling for every light on the strip
Done drilling for leds
and started wiring the strip
Soldering the corners
Which was difficult and time consuming
Viewing the lights
Testing if wiring is correct
Done cutting the box around the micro controller
The parts for the lower end of the box.
I cut freehand so it's not 100% straight
Top and lower part of the box
Waiting for the glue to dry
Click the image to zoom
Project Video
The design
I designed the cage in SketchUp. It is made from plywood and plexiglass. I bought the plexiglass from a small shop in Iceland, called Plexigler. I also asked them to cut the plexiglass for me. I sent them images from the drawing including a text description on the size of all plexiglass parts.
Material
The material, devices and system I used
- plywood 12mm (see design)
- Plexiglass 4mm and a little 5mm (see design)
- Mostly used this glue to glue the plexiglass together. I also used it to glue the plexiglass and the plywood together
- Used Crazy Glue when I needed to glue things to gether I could not wait for a long time for, the glue to take
- Esp32 micro controller
- APA light strip (I used 71 light)
- Some wires
- I used the VoffCon server to control the Esp32 which controls the strip
Wiring
Wiring is pretty simple, but soldering the strip took a while.
The power comes from the mini-usb plug and then flows through the development board to the strip. This seems to be OK because we do not want to have the lights too bright for the guinea pigs and the pixels on the strip count only 71. I tested showing the color white in full brightness. When I did that, the controller did not get enough power and rebooted, resulting in a pink low brightness color which is the default power on color.
How to connect the strip to the Esp32
| Esp32 | Light strip APA102 |
|---|---|
| 5V | 5 volts input |
| GND | Ground |
| G13 | CI Clock pin (IN: Input into the strip) |
| G14 | DI Data pin (IN: Input into the strip) |
The code
Device code
The code running on the device is from three files. The source of these files, I got from this GitHub repository and modified the .ino file just a little.
The VoffCon Card
Here is the Control Card I used in VoffCon to allow the user to control the strip.
DownloadThe VoffCon Control
The VoffCon Card uses the StripCtrl VoffCon Control to communicate with the Esp32.
Consideration
I would like to make some kind of automation for the cage but I don't know what. Maybe something for a automatic feeding or adding a motor to spin something.
If you have some Ideas please send me an email a this address: gudjonholm@gmail.com
Ideas
Projects to get Ideas from
- Automatic Pet Feeder using Arduino see Video, a product the page and a instructable
- Another instructable