Introduction:

A dog may be man’s best friend, but many of us live with cats, fish, iguanas, or even wilder animals. And naturally, we like to share our hacks with our pets. Whether it’s a robot ball-thrower, a hamster wheel that’s integrated into your smart home system, or even just an automatic feeder for when you’re not home, we want to see what kind of projects that your animal friends have inspired you to pull off.    

The top three entrants will receive a $150 gift certificate courtesy of DigiKey, this challenge's sponsor!

Honorable Mention Categories:

  • Pet Safety: Nothing is better than a hack that helps your pet stay out of trouble. If your hack contributes to pet safety, we want to see it.  
  • Playful Pets: Some hacks are just for fun, and that goes for our pet hacks too. If it’s about amusing either your animal friend or even yourself, it’s a playful pet hack. 
  • Cyborg Pets: Sometimes the hacks aren’t for your pet, but on your pet. Custom pet prosthetics or simply ultra-blinky LED accoutrements belong here.
  • Home Alone: This category is for systems that aim to make your pet more autonomous. That’s not limited to vacation feeders – anything that helps your pet get along in this world designed for humans is fair game.

Rules:

  • All entries must be pet-relevant: improving life for your pet, or making your human’s life with the pet easier or more fun.
  • We want to learn from you. Document your project as well as you can so that we can follow along.
  • All entrants must agree to have the design published on Hackaday.
  • Employees and contractors of DigiKey, Supplyframe, Siemens, Arduino, and their immediate family members are ineligible to win, but are still encouraged to enter.
  • Rules and categories are subject to change and judges' decisions are final.

Examples

Need some inspiration? Here are some projects to check out that should get your ideas flowing:

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