Now check out this project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A-Nf3QIJjM

A cat door that can tell if the cat has a mouse it's going to "gift" to you, and locks to keep the cat out.

As you might have guessed, that came to my mind too. Due to the fact that I have worked with a company in the fire damper business, I was contacting them and we were brainstorming about it. The thing is: The market is just non existent. Also fire-protection regulations can be very specific depending on the country you are in. For example, EU ratings are not always recognized here in Switzerland.

Since last week I'm in contact with the manufacturer of the door drive tough because they maybe want to create a product out of it. To be honest I think it would pure marketing and at the moment it is very unlikely to ever hit the market.

I don't use this specific drive due to the fact that another company gave me a better deal for some marketing. But if I had to choose again, I would buy a dormakaba ED 100 or ED 250 (depending on the weight of your door). They support multiple opening angles depending on how you activate it.

Here is a picture of him examining the tech behind his magic door https://i.imgur.com/81VgqaR.png

The door stays open for n amount of time (normally around 1min but I changed it to 30sec). The drive has a laser sensor attached to it (it is required to have installed with automatic doors in Switzerland if you don't want any issue with insurance). As soon as the specified amount of time has passed, the door drive tries to close the door. It only works if the laser sensor detects no obstacles.

Maybe a bit off-topic but: The only thing that differs an "fire-protection approved" door drive from a non approved drive is that the drive is not allowed to have an option to keep the door open. Also in case of power outage (or fire) the door needs to close without power.

I'd imagine the processing power required to detect whether or not a video feed contains a cat doesn't jive well with sharing a CPU with something presumably-realtime-sensitive like driving a motor to open a door.

No sadly not. I'd love to write about it but my English is just not good enough to write a compelling story. Writing it in German and then having it translated is always a bit of a hassle. But I may consider it. At the moment I have an offer of the door drive manufacturer for doing a "home story" about the solution. If that will happen, it will definitely be released in English.

I will open source everything once I'm happy with the security and the ability to configure it.