My first RaspberryPi project.

I have this giant cat wheel which is a must have for my cats, a very energetic pair of Bengals. They are nocturnal and they run on this thing all night long. So, as I am up all night listening to this wheel, struggling to sleep anyway, I started to wonder things like “How far are they running? How fast are they going?”, so this is what I came up with.

I used a hall-effect sensor, the same kind that is used as a sensor for alarm system. The sensor triggers when a magnet passes by it. I mounted a bunch of magnets on the wheel, and count them as they pass by using a RaspberryPi

Fun project. Took about 1 week from inception to completion.