Bark Back Interactive Pet Monitor

Contributors: jenfoxbot

Introduction

Shed some light (er, sound) on the elusive mysteries of your pets' antics while away from home! This Internet of Things (IoT) Bark Back project monitors and uploads the level of noise in your home to the Cloud so you can check on your beloved pet(s). The best part: if it gets too loud (i.e., Fido is barking or making some other ruckus), the program plays your own "bark back" audio file to help distract and quiet down the pup.

This project uses a Raspberry Pi to read the SparkFun MEMS microphone breakout board and trigger an audio player. Data is uploaded to the CloudMQTT service using the MQTT communication protocol.

For a demo, check out the video below!

Covered in This Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to do the following:

• Connect and read in the SparkFun MEMS Microphone using the Raspberry Pi 3
• Upload the volume level to the CloudMQTT service
• Use a volume threshold to trigger your "bark back" at your pooch if he/she gets too noisy

Suggested Reading

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

Raspberry Pi 3

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.

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 you'll need the MCP3002 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

You'll need the following materials to follow along.

You'll also need the following:

• MicroUSB power cable
• HDMI cable
• USB keyboard
• USB mouse
• Speakers with 1/8" headphone port