Listen for movement.
Start with Wi-Fi signal strength. Record a quiet-room baseline, then compare signal changes during controlled movement.
FIRST TEST / RSSI✳ AN INDEPENDENT LAB FOR CURIOUS MINDS
A little curiosity.
A lot of possibility.
We turn “what if?” into something you can actually build. Small electronics, open experiments, and useful ideas for the everyday.
Explore the first experiment MADE OF QUESTIONS. BUILT BY HAND.
ON THE WORKBENCH / 001 EXPLORING
Where do the paws go?
WIRELESS PET TRACKING ILLUSTRATIVE SIMULATIONExploring the room
CURIOUS BY NATURE✳HANDS-ON BY DESIGN✳ALWAYS EXPERIMENTING✳PARLOR LABS
01 / THE FIRST EXPERIMENT
RESEARCH & PROTOTYPINGSmall paws.
Big questions.
Can wireless signals tell us what our pets are up to?
Our first experiment starts with an ESP32 and a simple question: can we sense a pet moving through a room without a camera? From there, we’ll explore what it would take to map that movement in three dimensions.
Open the lab notebook ↗PROJECT / 001Wireless Pet Tracking
- Starting point
- ESP32-S3 + Wi-Fi RSSI
- First milestone
- Detect motion in a single room
- Research goal
- Explore 3D pet localization
- Next approaches
- Wi-Fi CSI · UWB ranging
- Current status
- Concept & experiment design
A work in progress. No measured tracking accuracy or pet-detection results yet.
THE PLAN, ONE QUESTION AT A TIME
✳Find the useful signal.
Test repeatability, interference, and human versus pet movement. Investigate Wi-Fi CSI for richer channel measurements.
NEXT QUESTION / CSIGive movement a place.
Evaluate a UWB tag and fixed anchors for location. Test anchor geometry and height estimation before claiming 3D tracking.
RESEARCH GOAL / 3DMotion sensing ≠ position tracking.
RSSI changes can suggest motion, but a single signal-strength stream doesn’t reveal a pet’s identity or its x, y, z coordinates. The room above illustrates the ambition, not a working tracker.
02 / THE LAB NOTEBOOK
Think it through.
Then try it out.
The questions, trade-offs, and first steps
behind the experiment.
A HEALTHY RESPECT FOR THE UNUSUAL.03 / WELCOME TO THE PARLOR
Serious curiosity.
A playful approach.
Parlor Labs is a place for ideas that won’t leave you alone. The “could we build that?” ideas. The ones that start on a scrap of paper and end with wires all over the table.
We’re beginning with small electronics and wireless sensing, documenting the process as we go. Expect experiments, useful discoveries, and a few things that don’t work the first time.
Pull up a chair. Open the notebook. ↗THERE’S ALWAYS ANOTHER “WHAT IF?”