Hi there.
I am teaching (at least trying too) to teach my puppy that he is not allowed to go up the stairs into our bedroom area, he is doing well but sneaks up every once and a while.
What I want to do is have a sensor on the first step area that will pick up only him going up and set off an alarm of sorts, maybe something on his collar? He has a safety reflective strip on his collar already?
Any ideas?
Thanks
Jono
What about a PIR sensor, correctly aligned would just see the first stair?
Thanks for the idea, I did consider that but it would pick up any one using the stair, I was thinking maybe something on the dogs collar that could be detected.
Hey,
You could put one on the step to see the dog, and second a little before it. The second one would need to be higher, so it would see a human and not a four legged friend. When it detects somebody, it tells Arduino to ignore the dog pir sensor for two seconds.
Hope this helps,
Mikey C
Good thinking, I'll look into that idea.
Thanks
A while ago I read about someone who use image recognition to detect when his cat was trying to reenter the house while carrying a 'critter' in it's mouth. It locked the cat door when the cat was carrying anything and unlocked the door when it was not. Perhaps you could do something like that.
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Don
RFID would be another option. Tag the dog's collar, and the ready will be able to identify it specifically.
Some cat flaps have an electronic lock that only unlocks them when a cat wearing the right tag approaches. Perhaps you could adapt one of these to detect when your dog approaches the stairs?
I've spent a lot of time studying and working with dog behavior, mostly as a result of adopting damaged dogs.
My advice, unsolicited: Be very careful about loud noises and especially attaching anything to the collar; we tried a simple mild vibrator on a dog once (with remote, as mild as a typical cell phone vibrator), designed just to get the dogs attention, and it scared her to death. Dogs can be very vulnerable that way and sometimes will never get over certain sounds/actions.
Also be aware that using a buzzer/whatever could make the dog wary of all similar sounds. These things are super variable depending on individual dog and its history. It's really complicated.
Ours are very highly trained and don't get on furniture, never go through a door while with us until given permission, but I've never been successful keeping them out of certain rooms of the house when they're not being watched, good luck with that! 
I design lift-off gates for rooms like that, or we use child gates.
I will bear this in mind, the alarm is more to notify me, maybe just a lED that I can see. The RFID seems the best idea so far thanks all for the support.