I’ve been playing a game of human and mouse recently. A couple of weeks ago, as I was walking into the kitchen, I spotted a mouse darting under the fridge. My first thought was to create an elaborate security camera system to find out where they go in the house.

The setup

I’d been meaning to put together a camera system that makes it easy to observe plants & animals etc., so this was all the motivation I needed.

You can find all the technical details in this repo.

I already had most of the parts I needed to make the camera - a raspberry pi zero, night vision camera, infrared (IR) spotlight, flexible tripod, and of course, Blu Tack, rubber bands and determination. Here’s the camera and spotlight:

Day 0 - the stakeout

Each evening, I set up the camera in the spot I wanted to monitor, and set it recording. Each morning, I scanned the recorded videos for motion using a handy tool called dvr-scan.

Day 1 - they’re on the kitchen bench

They’re all over the kitchen bench, eww! How did they get there? They climbed the network cable! Exhibit A:

Look at it go!

They also jump! Apparently their eyesight isn’t that great, so good effort here, for not much reward (apart from the funny video):

The cable guard

To stop them climbing the cable, I made a cable guard based on the plastic rings I’ve seen around some power lines. I assume those are to stop possums. My guard is made from high quality materials: cardboard, sticky tape and Blu Tack.

Day 2 - they’re still on the kitchen bench

D’oh. The first cable guard I made was too small. It stopped them for a while, but they outsmarted it before too long. Mice 1, Warwick 0.

I made a bigger guard. Hopefully they can’t climb around this one. The photo of the guard above is actually the bigger one I made.

Day 3 - they’re still on the kitchen bench, but I caught one!

There was no sign of the mice on the network cable this time. However, they’re still on the kitchen bench. How are they getting there? Time to move the camera.

In the meantime, I’ve had traps set up around the crime scene:

The food/bait sits deep inside, and when the mouse goes in to get it, the lid falls shut:

Genius!

D’aww he eats cheese just like I do. Off to the park!

Day 4 - a new route to the kitchen bench is discovered

I often saw the mice loitering around the dishwasher, so I set the camera up a bit closer to see what was going on there.

Aha! You sneaky, clever mouse! I stood staring at this wooden panel between the fridge and dishwasher for an unreasonably long time. Eventually, I devised a sophisticated barrier:

Cardboard again, sticky-taped to the panel. The idea was that it’d be too fiddly for the mice to hold on to on their way up…

It worked! Mice 1, Warwick 1.

The following week

The following few nights, I didn’t catch any mice on the kitchen bench, but they’ve still been foraging around on the floor. I’ve caught two more since, but the ’last’ one seems to have caught on that its friends don’t come back from the traps. It’s been visiting less and less, and I haven’t seen it in the last couple of days. The battle is over, for now…