Help TU/e Students Design a Smart Hamster Cage, Share Your Experience! 🐹

[Kerim]

Hi everyone,

We’re a team of engineering students at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) working on a course project to design a smart hamster cage that makes life easier for both hamsters and their owners.

To make sure our design really fits the needs of everyday hamster owners we’ve created a short 5-10 minute survey.
We’d love to hear about:

• Your experience as a hamster owner
• Any limitations or frustrations with current cages
• Ideas or “wish-list” features you’d like to see (automatic feeding, activity tracking, etc.)

Your responses are fully anonymous and will be used only for this academic project.
If you’d like to help, please click here: https://forms.gle/3HpyaPKJjRLV9cHEA

Thanks so much for helping us improve hamster care!
If you have thoughts or feedback beyond the survey, feel free to leave a comment, we’ll be checking the thread.

—The TU/e Smart Hamster Cage Team

 

[Maz]

Hi. Just to let members know the link is ok

Hi @Kerim. I've completed the survey. It's a good idea. Some of the things like humidity and temperature sensors could be useful - to make sure the hamster's area isn't too cold or too hot, and for some people, with deep bedding, it might help them know where the pee area is!

Some of the automated ideas for food and water sound clever. An alert when water is low sounds good. But automated feeding, I personally don't think would be good, because there needs to be some human interaction with our pets. For example mine come out at feeding time, they hear the rustle of the bag or box and the cage door opening and know it's feeding time. One of mine likes to sit and be hand fed at that time as well.

Hamster cages and enclosures have come on in leaps and bounds the last five years and there are much better, and larger choices than there used to be. The ones with a large front opening door (as well as top opening) are popular as you can be on the hamster's level when doing things (some don't like a hand from above). And it also means you can do most cleaning jobs through the front door rather than having to dismantle things etc and no need to take a barred top off.

Many of us have hamstercams for monitoring so a cage that came with that sounds good!

One thing that maybe does need to be considered when designing, is noise frequency. Hamsters can be affected by frequencies that we can't hear. Most aren't bothered by TV sets though.

 

[Daisy]

Just to let you know, I couldn't complete the survey as none of the household type options applied to me. I live with parents. I would love to complete it if this is fixed.

 

[Daisy]

I think the options are also a bit confusing as it has live with partner/spouse and live with children as separate options, when many people might be living with both a partner/spouse and children.

 

[Kerim]

I think the options are also a bit confusing as it has live with partner/spouse and live with children as separate options, when many people might be living with both a partner/spouse and children.

Hey Daisy, thanks for the feedback, I added a Live with parents option to it. I guess what we thought there is more like do you have kids or not in the house. So someone that would choose Live with partner/spouse would mean does not have children in the house and someone who would choose Live with children would have a child in the house. As we dont want to and do not need to have more information in that regard we disregarded options like without spouse but only children or with spouse and children etc. But I agree that it could have been more clear as to what the answers mean.
Thank you again for the feedback, hope you can give the form another try