This might be old news to other people, but last week my girlfriend showed me the Mr. Lee CatCam. This is just too cool. The creator of this cool hack, Juergen Perthold, has a well written intro on why he built this, and how it works. The basics idea is that he took a super small digital camera, added a bigger battery, and a small circuit that causes the camera to take a picture every minute. He then mounted this in a small housing that is fairly durable and water-tight, and then hung it on his cat’s neck!

When his cat leaves the house, this camera is keeping a photo log of where the cat goes, what it sees, and where it’s hanging out. When the cat comes home, Juergen simply removes the SD Memory card from the camera, and retrieves all of the photos. Juergen has some great photo tours that he has posted on the website that show examples of where his cat went, and what it saw. It’s too cool.

What is fascinating about this is the evolution of technology. Juergen was able to buy these parts off the shelf, hack them together for a small price, and have a really innovative technology. It’s amazing that he is getting great battery life out of this set-up, and the camera is surviving the trips out into the wild. It got me thinking about the miniaturization of technology, and the ability to get this functionality down in size at an affordable price. It also goes to show what could be done with animals in spying for the military … just add a GPS. 🙂

On top of all of this, Juergen has turned this into a commercial venture … you can buy a CatCam here! Gosh … this almost has me want to go out and buy a cat!