Have you ever had a problem with pesky mice running around your living space? It seems traditional traps never work. The mice aren’t attracted to the traps, the traps don’t go off, or the mcie are just too smart to get caught. This is humane and reliable mouse trap will solve this pest issue and banish all mice. This project is designed for anyone dealing with mice in their home, restaurant, or business.

What Our Project Is:

Our invention is a new and improved way to humanely trap an invasive mouse. While other traps maybe inconsistent due to their mechanical nature, our electrical conduction based trap will have better precision and will know exactly when to activate. The trap door would first be set up by propping the door open on the motor bit and turning on the power bit. When the mouse first enters the trap, its feet would act as the grounding point for the circuit and when its nose touches the cheese it would complete the circuit and activate the motor bit causing the trap door to drop.

Why Us?

While most common mouse traps use pressure plates and a system of mechanical movement and potential energy (spring) to activate the trap, these traps can fail through environmental aspects like vibration and slight movement. Our pretotype uses a very robust binary system. The trap would use electrical conductivity through the mouse itself to "sense" the mouse's presence and activate when the mouse touches the cheese and completes the circuit. The electrical conduction based system ensures the trap would only be primed and ready to activate when the mouse is physically in the trap, thus making the trap more precise, robust and controlled.

How it Works:

MouseyHousey functions through an intuitive user-interface design that relies on electrical conduction with a mouse's paws and mouth. With a base of aluminum sheet, a piece of food is placed with a lead wire connected to it via a pin. Upon a mouse touching the base with its feet and touching the food with its mouth or nose, a circuit is connected that is recognized by the "MakeyMakey Bit" which will allow power to be sent to the "Motor Bit". The motor bit will then rotate and cause the door to close. Congrats! You caught your annoying mouse!

A Technical Breakdown of the MouseyHousey

Parts Used:

Makey Makey Board

Aluminum Foil

Sewing Pin

Power bit

Wire Bit

Motor Bit

9V Battery

2 Alligator clip wires

Team Members:

Lily Tibaldi lit47@pitt.edu

Hassan Jafarah hmj19@pitt.edu

Steven Diaz asd79@pitt.edu

Sam Lord SRL56@pitt.edu

This project was developed as part of the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering course ENGR 1716 The Art of Making: An Introduction to Hands-On System Design Engineering .

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