[Entropy11]

So I’m sick of always having to worry about mice in our home garage where we keep the cars we work on. We are surrounded on 2 sides by fields and woods, home to many curious mice. We take our usual steps with the cars we keep in our storage building (steel wool in all engine entry/exit places, cut up urinal mats in/on/under our cars) and have been successful since switching to that method.

Our home garage mice are a little more persistent as they like the slightly heated garage when it’s 10° out. While working in there I’d rather not have it smell like a urinal either. I’ve recently been tinkering with 120V AC short cycle timers connected to strobed led’s and 12/24v DC vibration motors. Total cost isn’t much over the $30 cycle timer.

Anyways, I set the cycle timer to run for something like 30s every 5min. so I get a 30s run of strobe led’s under the car and the vibration motor mounted to a sheet metal base I leave in the trunk. The vibration is currently a little excessive so I’m toning it down a bit. So far so good for the last 2mos or so. This is usually the time of year when the mice start migrating in.

Last week I got the idea to “automate” things a bit more and started programming a microcontroller ($10 Raspberry Pi Pico) to become a “smart” deterrent system. Essentially, for a few bucks you can add a sensor to the system and automate things. I’m currently testing a $2 HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Distance Module triggering strobe led’s, a tiny 12v motor that creates noise and vibration, and possibly a beeper/buzzer. This is in addition to scheduled cycles.

I hate the thought of mice in the garage, but the market is actually flooded with cheap yet high quality electronics and it’s kinda fun being creative.