this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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homeassistant

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self-cleaning litter box? (lemmy.d.thewooskeys.com)
submitted 2 years ago by mike_wooskey@lemmy.d.thewooskeys.com to c/homeassistant@lemmy.world
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Does anyone have any experience with self-cleaning cat litter boxes? The ability to connect one to Home Assistant doesn't really seem useful to me - maybe it would be nice for HA to alert you when the litter box needs to be changed. But I'm really just curious if any particular model of self-cleaning litter box is any good - even by itself, without any "smart" features. We now have 4 cats and it would be nice to not have to clean litter boxes manually 1-2 times every day.

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[–] cosmic_slate@dmv.social 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

But I’m really just curious if any particular model of self-cleaning litter box is any good - even by itself, without any “smart” features.

So..... this isn't a smart litterbox, it's just self-cleaning. It doesn't have Home Assistant integration or anything, but I've had decent success with this:

https://www.petsafe.com/product/scoopfree-smart-self-cleaning-litter-box/

Pay the $50 ransom to get the "reusable" plastic litter tray thing and make sure you buy the larger crystal cat litter like this(don't use clay, paper, the fine powdery dusty non-clumping, or anything else, it WILL clog up). This ends up a little cheaper than Petsafe's disposable trays.

I have 2 with 2 cats. Mine gets stuck maybe once every 2-3 weeks, which I'm personally fine with, but scooping around the sifter works fine. Plus it's open top, so if your cats hate enclosed areas...

I eventually plan to make mine smart by tapping into the sensor that detects when cats use the litter box with an ESP8266 to track how often my cats use it but it's on the eternal project pile.