Every year we have a summer BBQ at work. There is always lots of food, drinks and good fun. This year it was proposed to have an interdepartmental talent competition. (As it turns out engineering is the only department brave enough). So after much discussion we decided that we would perform several individual talents. My talent… musical pet bowls! The Sealed Pet Bowl is the first product I helped develop during my first year at SureFlap. I developed very sensitive proximity/motion sensors that surround the bowl, when it detects something near it opens up. Since I worked on the electronics and firmware I am very familiar with it’s operation and knew it would be quite a simple mod to turn the pet bowl into an effective theremin/laser harp type instrument.

To get notes from the pet bowl I took the PWM output normally used to drive the lid and ran it to a small guitar amp. The firmware knows which sensor is being triggered so it was a simple case of making the PWM frequency dependant on which sensor was triggered. Then doing this to 3 pet bowls. Job done, a pet bowl instrument.

Now it was just a case of learning how to play the thing. Time was as limited as my instrument so I managed Ode to Joy. Good performance. Everybody claps. Roll on snare drum. Curtains. You are now looking at the SureFlap’s got (no) talent winner 2016! Video of the performance.