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6.29.22 – Yanko Design

The Petvation aluminum pet door taps artificial intelligence to recognize furry little ones and slide open for them. The device can recognize up to 32 pets and be controlled remotely via a smartphone app.

The most advanced pet door on the market only allows ‘approved’ pets to enter or exit your home.

The smart home just got a little smarter for your four-legged friend too. Meet Petvation, a camera-enabled pet door that solves a few common problems with traditional pet doors. The problem with flap-based doors is that they let anyone out or in, heightening the danger of your pet escaping, or a bunch of raccoons breaking in. Mechanical doors, on the other hand, can stress a pet out, are prone to breakage, or end up requiring human intervention. Petvation does away with all that by just using the same tech used by your smart doorbell – facial recognition.

Built with a motor-operated aluminum alloy door (making it less prone to breakage or damage) that slides up and down, Petvation uses a pair of cameras to detect your pet when it’s exiting the house or entering from the outdoors. The door only opens when it sees your pet, and not for any other animal, making it much more effective than any other solution there is. Petvation’s design team was also quick to point out how current technology relies on sensor-embedded collars which have their own areas of failure too. Sensors can sometimes go undetected, collars can get lost, and most importantly, there’s nothing stopping two animals from entering at once while one wears a collar. Petvation’s facial recognition just provides a much more elegant and fool-proof solution!

So how does it work? Well, all you do is measure, cut, and install the Petvation pet door on any regular door – it works with wood, engineered wood, plastic, and even glass doors – or even on windows, and that’s the hardware part taken care of. The Petvation’s mechanical door is airtight, windproof, water-sealed, and built like a tank so there’s no way of really breaking through. You’ll have to have an outlet nearby handy, because Petvation runs on a 12V power supply (there aren’t any batteries built in this thing), although the company does mention it can be run on a power bank too!

Once installed, the Petvation’s camera and app take over. The camera profiles your pet’s face to be able to detect it pretty much the way your phone’s facial unlock system does. Two sets of high-resolution infrared cameras are built into the slim door frame, with 120-degree wide-angle lenses on each side for a better PoV, and an anti-pinch sensor that only closes the door after the pet’s fully crossed over. The infrared cameras allow the Petvation to work even in low light, working not just as an authentication camera but also as a security cam that gives you alerts on your phone. Petvation’s smartphone app allows you to control the door remotely, monitor activity through your phone, and even set curfews, so your cat or dog doesn’t up and walk off at odd hours of the day. Lock the door and it won’t open while you’re asleep, no matter how much your pet scratches away at it.

The Petvation door measures 21.3 inches tall and 15.6 inches wide, with an opening that’s suitable for pets around 7-inches wide – most cats, and smaller to medium-sized dogs like bulldogs, pugs, corgis, shiba inus, etc. Its internal motor works at a quiet 40-45 decibel level, so the sound of the motor doesn’t disturb you or alarm your pet. The Petvation can store facial profiles for as many as 32 animals at a given time (which works well if you’re pet-obsessed), and although it only works for cats and dogs for now, chances are it could expand its dataset with future updates.