I've had a couple of Pet Porte cat flaps (https://goo.gl/eR3p19), which allow entry for only cats that I choose (up to 32 of 'em).
They work by recognising the RFID chips that the cats have had inserted (a legal requirement now in the UK - for dogs, voluntary for cats).
The flap itself has 2 'stops', that sink into the unit to enable / disable locking - each way (controlled by solenoids), and an external ('porch') coil to read the RFID chips.
The unit basically has 2 buttons, which are used to add new cats / set the flap to certain modes (lock both ways, let em in but not out, lock at night etc).
This involves a convoluted combination of button presses / pressing a varied number of seconds dependant on required mode.
These presses are a) impossible to memorise b) awkward to do (there are a lot of options).
I'd like to program a chip + wifi enable it, circumvent the current Pet Porte chip and make it internet connectable (where, a user-friendly interface can be used to control it's modes).
Please note that I have already contacted the company GIVING them the idea, as I KNOW it ain't rocket science - with zero response.
I am however a mechanical engineer, currently a software engineer - not an electronics engineer, and, although I can envisage it being relatively simple - I haven't really got a clue.
I have a couple of Raspberry Pi's, but the Arduino seems to have a much better 'infrastructure' / following, and, I quickly found an example of transferring code from an Arduino over to a programmable EEPROM chip. Thus, I've decided that the Arduino will be the unit used to prototype, from there I'll look at building a small board with an EEPROM chip / wifi enablement.
Am I over-simplifying? Am I barking up the wrong tree?
Any advice, pointers, references (Arduino type, EEPROM chip type etc) much appreciated.
Thanks,
Def