Concepts and Selection

2.2 Concepts

Acceptance Criteria

• Required Detection: The device is capable of detecting cats as well as whether or not their ears are clipped. 

• Battery Life: An ideal battery life would be one week or more depending on the final hardware chosen. There should also be an option for a wired connection.

• Internet Connectivity: The device must be able to use a wired or wireless connection provided by the user. The difficulty of this will depend on the hardware chosen.

Success Criteria

The device and software provides a comprehensive solution for feral cat feeders to track the number of neutered and non-neutered cats within their colonies. This data can then be used to assist TNR programs in performing their jobs more efficiently, as well as provide concrete information on the efficacy of TNR programs as a humane solution to feral cat populations.

Out of Scope

• Compatibility with other IoT devices.

• Access and administration performed with a mobile device.

Assumptions

• Stray cat feeders will have a suitable location to mount the hardware. 

• Customers will have an active internet connection, either through Ethernet or Wi-Fi

Dependencies

• We are depending on a number of open source software libraries. Because of their open source nature we are free to change and modify them as we see fit if they do not fit the exact purposes that we desire.

• We also have a number of hardware dependencies that we have almost no control over. We are trusting that manufacturers will deliver products as advertised, and that they would be available in necessary quantities.

Constraints

• An improved prototype must be ready for the innovation expo on April 26, 2024. 

MVP

The MVP currently consists of a Raspberry Pi 4 connected to an IR camera, with all necessary software running locally. If our assumptions are correct then switching from the PyTorch YOLOv7 model to a TensorFlow based model will provide significant performance increases through the use of specialized acceleration hardware. The improved prototype will consist of this new hardware along with the updated software to utilize the new model. We would also like to demonstrate multiple systems working together using a cloud provider as a backend, however this might require two prototypes, which may not be feasible. 

2.3 Concept Selection

On a Scale of 1 to 5

• Accuracy (5)

  • It is important that we don't produce false positives and accurately report to the user statistics on the stray cat population in the area

• Accessibility (5)

  • It is important to our users that it is both easy to access our product as well as easy to use our product

• Cost (4)

  • It is important for us to reduce costs as much as possible as our product is to be used in multiple locations, but there are limitations on how cheap the components we can use are while still retaining good functionality

• Security (3)

  • While security is important as we do not want the equipment to be stolen, it is unlikely that it would be targeted to be stolen

• Energy Efficiency (2)

  • While we do not want our product to have a high energy intake, it is unlikely that it would have problems with energy efficiency as it is meant to be plugged in

• Compactness (1)

  • We do not believe that compactness is a problem for our product, but even so the size of the product has little impact on the results of it