IoT Pet Monitor!

Keep an eye (er, ear) on your beloved bbies while you are away! This project monitors the volume of sound in your home and if your pet gets too anxious and starts barking or making other loud noises, soothe their sad lil’ soul by turning on music or your own (pre-recorded) voice!

This tutorial will show how to build this project using a Raspberry Pi computer to monitor sound in your home (via the Cloud) to see if and when your pet is upset.

Along with the Pi (and speakers), we’ll use the SparkFun MEMS microphone breakout board to measure volume levels and trigger the audio player. Data is uploaded to the CloudMQTT service using the MQTT communication protocol.

Total Read Time: 8 min.

Total Build Time: 60 min. (less if you are experienced)

Suggested Reading

To build this project, you’ll need a fully configured, WiFi-connected Raspberry Pi 3 computer with ​Raspbian OS. It’s also helpful to know some ​Python programming as well as the following things: (1) how to use and control the Raspberry Pi GPIO pins; (2) MQTT communication; and (3) analog sensors. If any of this is unfamiliar, or if you’re just curious (be curious!), check out the tutorials below!

Raspberry Pi 3

  1. ​Raspberry Pi 3 Starter Kit Hookup Guide
  2. ​Raspberry Pi GPIO
  3. ​SPI Communication with the Raspberry Pi

MQTT Communication Protocol

MQTT (Message Query Telemetry Transport) is a popular IoT communication protocol. We’ll use the Paho Client Python library and an MQTT service called ​CloudMQTT. Here’s more about MQTT and how to use it:

  1. Exploring Communication Protocols for IoT
  2. Getting Started with CloudMQTT
  3. ​Overview of Eclipse Paho MQTT Python client library

MEMS Microphone Breakout Board

The MEMS microphone is an analog microphone, so we’ll need an Analog-to-Digital converter (“ADC”) to read in the analog signal with the Raspberry Pi digital GPIO pins.

  1. Getting started with the SparkFun MEMS Microphone Breakout Board
  2. ​MEMS Microphone Datasheet
  3. MCP3002 ADC Datasheet

 

Materials

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B

We’ll also need the following peripherals: ​Raspberry Pi 3 Case​SD Card (minimum 8 GB); ​Raspberry Pi 3 GPIO cable; ​MicroUSB power cable; HDMI cable and ​HDMI-compatible monitor; USB keyboard; USB mouse; speakers with 1/8″ headphone port.

​SparkFun MEMS Mic Breakout Board

​MCP3002 (Analog-to-Digital Converter)

​Breadboard & ​M-to-M Breadboard Jumper Wires

 

Configure the Raspberry Pi

Step 1: Check & Install Updates
Checking for and installing updates is always a good way to start. Run the following commands in the terminal window:

    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get upgrade
    sudo reboot

Step 2: Set up SPI Interface for MEMS Microphone + MCP3002

To use the SPI (Serial Port Interface) to read in the MEMS Microphone via the MCP3002, we’ll need the Python Dev Package:

    sudo apt-get install python-dev

We’ll also need the SPI Interface (may want to create a subfolder to save this in):

    git clone git://github.com/doceme/py-spidev
    sudo python setup.py install

Here’s the SPI-Dev Documentation if you run into any issues.

Step 3: Playing Sounds with OMXPlayer

The OMXPlayer is an audio and video player pre-loaded on Raspbian OS. It works with most sound file types, including: .wav, .mp3, and .m4a. This is what we’ll use to play back sounds when Fido gets too loud. The Python library to control the OMXPlayer is included in Raspbian (woo!).

To test the OMXPlayer from the terminal, type the following:

    omxplayer /home/.../SongFilePath/SongFileName.mp3

If that doesn’t work, try forcing it over the local audio-out device:

    omxplayer -o local /home/.../SongFilePath/SongFileName.mp3

Step 4: Configure CloudMQTT Server

Now we set up an MQTT server! To do this using CloudMQTT, do the following:

  1. Set up a CloudMQTT account (the “Cute Cat” plan is free).
  2. Create a new MyCloud instance.
  3. In the Console, create a new ACL rule.
  4. You can monitor published messages in the “Websocket” UI.

 

Finally, install the MQTT Paho Client Python library:

    pip install paho-mqtt


Build it! Hardware

Here’s a pinout for the Raspberry Pi 3:

1. Insert MCP3002 pins into breadboard. Here’s a pinout for this board:

The MCP3002 uses 4 SPI pins for communication: Serial Clock (“SCL”), Master Input Slave Output (“MISO”), Master Output Slave Input (“MOSI”), and Chip Select (“CS”). These pins correspond to Raspberry Pi GPIO pin 11 (SCLK), GPIO pin 9 (MISO), GPIO Pin 10 (MOSI), and GPIO Pin 8 (CE0).

Make the following connections with MCP3002 pins:

  • ​Connect Pin 1 to Raspberry Pi GPIO Pin 8 (CE0)
  • Connect Pin 2 to the analog output of the MEMS Microphone breakout board
  • Connect Pin 4 to GND
  • Connect Pin 5 to Raspberry Pi GPIO Pin 10 (MOSI)
  • Connect Pin 6 to Raspberry Pi GPIO pin 9 (MISO)
  • Connect Pin 7 to Raspberry Pi GPIO Pin 11 (SCLK)
  • Connect Pin 8 to Raspberry Pi 3.3V out

2. Solder wires to the MEMS Microphone breakout board. Connect to MCP3002 and Raspberry Pi.

  • ​Connect Vcc to Raspberry Pi 3.3V.
  • Connect GND to Raspberry Pi GND
  • Connect AUD to MCP3002 Pin 2

3. Plug in all the cables for the Raspberry Pi and turn everything on.

 

Build it! Software

Our goal with the Bark Back is twofold: trigger a playback sound when the dog barks, and send the data to a server where we can check it.

Here’s the ​open-source Python program for this project. Feel free to (and please do) adjust and modify the code

To get the program up and running, you need to fill in two things:

songList: Write in the file path and file name for each of the songs you want to play.

creds: Input your CloudMQTT information in this dictionary.

Step 1: Read in the SparkFun MEMS Microphone breakout board.

Read in the ADC value (between 0 and 1023) from the MEMS Microphone breakout board (via the MCP3002) using the SPI library and calculate the signal peak-to-peak amplitude.

Map the signal peak-to-peak amplitude to a Volume Unit. The current code maps the ADC range between 0 and 700 (based on quick experimentation) to a Volume Unit between 0 and 10. To adjust the sensitivity of the microphone, adjust the ADC input range.

For a thorough overview of the MEMS mic, ​check out this tutorial.

Step 2: Trigger audio player.

First we’ll need songs to play! You can quickly record sounds in GarageBand (or on your smartphone) and send ’em to the Raspberry Pi. In Python, use the subprocess library to call the omxplayer.

In the code, input the file path of the songs you want to play back in the *songList* variable (line 26). The current volume threshold is set to 7 in the main function.

Step 3: Send data to CloudMQTT Server

Use the ​Paho Client Python library to communicate with the CloudMQTT servers. To broadly summarize: Set up a Client server; define communication protocols; connect with our credentials (aka creds); and subscribe and publish our data. Most of this is done in the main function (lines 129 – 149, and lines 169 – 174).

To check on received data, go to the “Websocket UI” tab in the CloudMQTT console.

 

Test & Install & Enjoy!

Run the BarkBack.py program in Terminal or in the Python IDE (you can also use SSH to run the program after you’ve already left).

Check that you are getting volume levels in your Websocket UI tab.

Test the system by triggering the mic (clap, yell, bark, etc.) to be sure that the speakers play through all of the sounds.

Once everything is up and running, it’s recommended to solder the components to a PCB (Printed Circuit Board) if you intend to install the system for more than just a few days.

 

Project Extensions

1. Add in an RPi camera module to include video.
2. We’re already connected to the IoT, so why not throw in some more sensors! For example, you could monitor hazardous gases (perhaps methane?).
4. Prefer a reward over barking back? Create an automatic treat dispenser to reward your pet for being quiet for a few hours. Here’s a candy-dispensing tutorial for inspiration and to help get you started.
5. Share your findings and adaptations in the comments below!

Happy building!

9 thoughts on “IoT Pet Monitor!”

  1. I like this project a lot. I was actually looking for this exact thing, and was googling “sound activated sound maker” with no luck, boom the universe replies! I’m not code literate, but I have had lots of luck with raspberry pi projects, and have a background in software QA.

    We need this for my cousins anxious little dog.

    My plan is to make this and gift it to them for their apartment, but my idea to was to have it headless and have a startup script to run it when powered up.

    If this was my house I would ssh into the pi and run the program and kill it when I wanted it off, but lets say for its practical use, its going to be plugged in, maybe just unplugged when they want it off.

    No graceful shutdowns, etc. I know the sd’s do kinda get corrupted easily but otherwise I’m hoping this isn’t a problem.

    Thanks again!

    1. Awesome, stoked to hear that the project is helpful! I definitely love that it will help an anxious lil’ pup while its human pack is away. It shouldn’t be too difficult to write a startup script especially since you’ve had experience w/ the Pi, some Google searching should do the trick. The good thing about SD cards is that they are fairly inexpensive to replace so if something does happen just reload the program. Also, you could use the Pi Zero W for this! Happy building!

    1. Hello! The MEMS microphone you linked to uses I2C communication while the one in this tutorial is analog — there are substantial differences in the code to connect with the two different sensors. That said, you can definitely use the Adafruit version you’ll just need to adjust the code accordingly. Hope that helps!

  2. Hi. Would you foresee any major issues in substituting the microphone module with a USB microphone?

    Thanks

    1. That should work just fine! You will need to update the code to remove the MEMS mic reading and substitute the trigger for a trigger based on the USB mic output. I’d recommend getting some data, both of ambient noise level and also where you are making loud sounds, to figure out a good threshold. Hope that helps! If you need more details, here’s a tutorial that looks useful: https://makersportal.com/blog/2018/8/23/recording-audio-on-the-raspberry-pi-with-python-and-a-usb-microphone

Comments are closed.