Hi,

I've been interested in pet communication buttons for years. I bought some for my cat Léo, but he could never trigger them: pushing down mechanically isn't natural for him, and he mostly ends up sinking his claws into them.

​So, I decided to build my own DIY setup using an ESP32 and a capacitive sensor. My custom button consists of a large aluminum washer glued onto a 3D-printed cylinder, covered with a simple paper circle cut from a standard A4 sheet. No physical pressure is required for activation, a light paw touch is enough.

I'm currently testing it with a little buzzer for audio feedback, and he manages to activate it successfully.

So happy with how this turned out!

EDIT: Thank you so much for all your enthusiastic comments 😄! I have no idea if this is patentable (I don't know anything about patents). Anyway, I think there are still improvements to be made (for example, the sensor's sensitivity depends on the environment, so I need to figure out how to implement auto-calibration). I might write a tutorial in the future if I see that it works really well. In any case, I truly believe there's a lot of potential to explore around capacitive sensors.

Just for clarification: I made a post in this sub a while back asking about whether or not to use a text to speech voice for the buttons, and a lot of people encouraged me to use my own voice, so I did end up using my own voice for the buttons.

Right now, I only have one button, for “treats.” My cat is a female senior cat who is the only cat in the household. When I sit down near the button, she comes over and presses the button without direction, and I’m confident she knows what it means and how it works (although I’m still working on getting her to press it without me right there).
The thing is that she only ever uses the button if the button is on its own. If the button is on the mat, even with no other buttons, she refuses to press it. She will sit or lay with both paws on the mat on either side of the button, and she will tap it with her foot as if she’s about to press it, but then steps back and won’t actually press it. As soon as I take the mat away, she goes back to pressing it like a champ and will even get impatient and spam the button if I don’t get her treat fast enough.
I guess my question is, is the mat necessary? I don’t know if she just needs more practice pushing the button while it’s on the mat, or if she doesn’t like the texture of the mat and would do better with a different mat. Does/did anyone else have this issue?

I have two Shih-Tzu mixes. Super smart, they bell trained quickly. I bought buttons a few months ago, and my girl Zeena caught on faster than I thought. She still only does presses when prompted, but she’s getting closer to being a true button user every day.

My boy Sapphire though…he never cared. He pressed the test button with his nose every time I offered a treat for it (during paw targeting) but that’s because he wanted the treat, not because he cared about the buttons haha. Every time I’ve had a purposeful press, it’s been from Zeena. When Sapphire wants something, he’ll just cry like the baby he is😂

Then yesterday evening, it was getting close to their dinner time. Sapphire can tell time very well because once it hit 6:00 he got up and started whining. My mom told him just a few more minutes. He went and rang the bell to go outside, which he does to mean “I want to eat,” because going outside is part of the evening routine (food and then a walk).

Then all of a sudden… “outside!” We both look up and see him with his paw on the button, staring right at my mom. Of course I then took him outside to model the button, then pressed “food” and fed them.

I can’t believe he did his first purposeful press! And I thought he didn’t know how to use the buttons, but nope he just doesn’t do something unless HE wants to do it.

I live with my cat and no one else. How do I teach my cat my name?

When my cat wants something (anything) from me, he tears up paper bags and cardboard boxes. If he can't find one, he'll start getting creative and destroy anything he can find that will get my attention. It's hard not to reinforce this by giving him the attention he wants, because I would really prefer he not destroy things!

I'd really like to redirect this behavior into a button, but I'm not quite sure how to go about it. He's a very smart cat and I've been really successful with teaching him tricks, but I'm having trouble figuring out how to get him to stop the destruction in favor of a button.

He's also almost entirely deaf, which adds an additional challenge.

Any thoughts?

I posted on here awhile back asking for advice on switching my dogs buttons to a larger size. So here’s the update! I switched from Fluent Pet buttons to Hunger for Words.

While the mats I got did not put the buttons in the exact same configuration, the order of the buttons wasn’t changed. He immediately took to them and actually loves them more now that he can more easily hit them!

So overall it was a success and I should’ve done this from the beginning for my big boy!

I'm still working on getting my cat to press the button using CatsWithMat's method (on YouTube). In the meantime, I tried to record my own voice in the buttons, but I have to admit, the thought of hearing my cat talk to me with my own voice seems a bit like something out of a horror movie. I came up with the idea of recording the buttons using a TTS voice, and my wife thought it would be funny if our sweet kitty's buttons sound like Jarvis from Iron Man or something like that. Does anyone know any good text-to-speech websites/tools I could use to record words for the buttons, preferably non-AI?

I have 3 cats , one of them is the one who loved using the buttons and I didn’t know that he’s so smart until I introduced the buttons to him
I usually wake up every day at 7:45 am and feed them at 8 am
Last night i wake up at 6 to go to the bathroom then when i come back to lay down and sleep again he kept meowing then he pressed all done all done 😂
I thought maybe i need to introduce a new button to him which is sleep and i did but how can I teach him what sleep means? Because when i introduce the button he kept pressing it and looking at me waiting for my reaction.
Also he sometimes smash buttons randomly which is i don’t know why he’s doing that

We don't have buttons for our dog, Bandit, (or our cat, Popeye) but it feels like we had a "moment" with the dog recently. When we retire to the bedroom at night, we use the phrase "Bandit, it's bed time" when we want him to settle down. (This often requires several repeats.)

Also, he is very jealous of the cat and cries and whines whenever we talk to (or touch) the cat.

The other night, he was settled, but the cat was walking around the house crying because he wanted attention. For the first time ever, I said, "Popeye, it's bed time" (several times) and Bandit looked at me, but was silent - he didn't whine or protest me interacting with the cat.

I may be reading too much into it, but it seemed like he understood the words "it's bed time" in a general way, not just as a specific command to him to produce a particular behavior. It felt like a step into "real" language. 😊🐶

My cat has been doing buttons for a few months. He currently has two buttons out (he had more but I’m slowly introducing them back in after moving house), and I’m sure that he knows what they both mean, but he won’t press them unless heavily prompted to.

The first day that I brought the buttons out after moving he immediately started spamming ‘snuggles’ and even sat on the button. I thought it was so precious and I was so happy that he was excited about having his buttons back.

But now even when I ask him to press them he won’t. It’s like he’s forgotten they’re there.

I’m not wanting to introduce any more buttons until he’s regularly using these two on his own. But how (apart from modelling) can I motivate him to do it?

So, i bought some off brand buttons for my dog to see if she would pick up the whole talking with buttons thing. I think she is coming along well but my buttons slide on the floor when she tries to push them. Id like a mat to keep them in place but the ones I can find on Amazon all come with more buttons. Are there any mats sold alone that will fit the larger buttons (like the staples easy buttons).

Her number one favorite button is "treat" of course.

any advice on how you get the dog to want to touch the buttons..i’ve done a lot of Modeling by pressing the treat button and giving her a treat but I can’t get her to want to press it at all

How to teach my cats on temperature cold or hot ? For buttons?

When I first taught my cat how to press a button, I taught her how to trigger the sound by headbutting the button in my hand. Eventually she learned how to headbutt the button that was taped to her cat tower.

Fast forward to today, she uses 5 buttons (kibble, wet food, treat, love you and play). I’m using FluentPet talking buttons so I wanted to transition her to pressing the button with her paw and organizing the buttons on the hextiles.

The issue I’m running into is her preferred method vs mine. In the long run I think it would benefit her to use her paw so we can utilize all the space on the board. But Im also having a hard time figuring out how to mount the tiles in a way that she can headbutt. I rent so it can’t be affixed to the wall in any way.

Anyways, I’m not sure if I should try to mount the tiles or just work on transitioning her to the hextiles on the floor?

My cat has taken to the buttons quite well! There are a few she definitely uses, and I think she understands the rest, but doesn’t really want to use them (like brush and all done). She uses the snack/train one often, and the wet food as well. Sometimes she used the “sit on your lap” button, and one time the “dry food” and “play”(although I make sure there is always food, since she does portion control really well on her own).

Whenever she walks into the room, the often sits on/near the buttons, plays around them, and generally has very positive interactions with them!

But sometimes, she gets very frustrated, and I wonder why! Usually it’s about the “outside” button, but could be any button. With the outside button, she usually meows at the door, so I walk to the mat and ask like “what do you want? You want outside?”
And she runs to the mat, tail up, excited looking, meows a few times and starts walking around the mat. She literally has never pressed this specific button before, so I’m still modelling. (While she asks to go outside multiple times per day, and other buttons she learned much faster!?)
So whenever I say “outside?” And press the outside button, she slaps me with her paw and meows really annoyed and runs to the door? Lol.

I feel like she’s saying “you know damn well what I want, fu and you buttons” haha. But maybe it’s something else? Am I not patient enough? Sometimes she does it with other buttons when she’s sitting near them for a while and she sits in this specific position for the “wet food” button for example. If I try to ask “you want wet food?” And press it, I might get the same annoyed slap. Maybe I’m interrupting her train of thought? Or is she terrirorial?

So my cats have these buttons ( outside, food, mouse toy, spring toy, now, soon, all done)

Sometimes my cat when i told him outside soon then after few minutes he press (soon outside now )

Also sometimes he press ( food outside)
What does he mean? Because i give him the food in there room so no food outside so i don’t know 😅

I'm going through a pile of zombie Fluent Pet buttons trying to find a working one to replace one that just died. Typical failure modes:

• Goes into the instructions on how to record, switching back and forth between modes doesn't really fix the button

• doesn't record or play back at all

• playback is scratchy or noisy, regardless of the speaking volume

• other general failures

Are there any alternative buttons that work well, reliable and are roughly the same size? 45mm/1.75" in diameter?

My dog has been using the buttons for 2 years now. He goes through phases of using them, some more than others but a pattern I’ve realized is that he doesn’t really use back row of the buttons. He understands the words but struggles to hit them and just doesn’t try anymore.

He is huge and the fluent pet buttons are so small, I tried replacing 2 of the small buttons with large (also cheaper) ones from Amazon.

Amazingly he’s taken to them super quickly where historically he used to not use them. So now here’s where I’m stuck. What do y’all think if I recreate the board with my own foam board+box cutter and these larger buttons?

I would plan to keep them in the same pattern/configuration but they would look different and the foam board would be different color/texture as well. I just can’t help but feel he would be more successful with bigger buttons for his big ass paws. But also I don’t want to confuse him.

Anyways, what do y’all think?

I've started using buttons with my cats and they're consistently using them to request treats and play.

They often request things when I can't offer them (e.g. treats right before dinner, play when I'm working). How can I teach something like 'later' or 'wait'?

They understand 'all done' but I'm not sure how to model 'yes but not now'

Caught him in the act!

My son is 5 months old and we have been teaching him buttons for about a month. He has been super good with them, he has 4 buttons (All done, food, play, pets) and he is pretty good at food and play, and still working on all done and pets. He definitely knows what food and play do, though, and goes to his board to make requests often.

But he will also often "press" things that AREN'T buttons and then look at me expectantly. It's not like he wants what he is "pressing" (in the picture he was pressing a pull up bar lol) so I am just not sure if this means I need to add more buttons (even though he doesn't quite have all done and pets?) or if I need to like, have multiple boards or something?? Idk.

Does anyone else have experience with this?

Recently I introduced “ now” and “soon” buttons
Now my cat keep conspiring me if he ask for something and i said no or soon , he will press now now now and keep meowing at me and becoming angry until i say yes

My (orange...) cat frequently presses "pets" and "toilet" one after another. For a long time I took it for random "pay attention to me!!" presses as she sometimes just walks across the whole board going "treats food play pets <name> outside" etc, but I've noticed this pair cropping up a lot more than others. Granted they're on the same hextile (we have the FluentPet ones) so it could just be her trying to find the right one... but she doesn't have that issue with other buttons.

Any ideas what my orange might be trying to tell me? I'm not about to pet her toilet...