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IoT / Hardware•May 2025
Hamster Monitoring System
Raspberry PiPythonIoTNext.js
IoT Telemetry & Dashboard
Platform
Raspberry Pi & Hall Sensor
Hardware
Python Daemon & Next.js
Stack
The Idea & Challenge
Measuring the nocturnal running distance and habitat climate of a pet hamster using non-intrusive, chew-resistant hardware sensors and real-time data logging.
Role & Technical Scope
Architected and built the full-stack IoT system: wired Hall-effect and DHT22 sensors to a Raspberry Pi, wrote a Python daemon with systemd, and built a live Next.js telemetry dashboard.
Outcome & Learning
A personal curiosity project that evolved into a longitudinal behavioral experiment, capturing high-resolution telemetry on exercise, climate, and circadian rhythms.
- Monitoring Duration & Scale: Maintained ~250 days of near-continuous telemetry across 8 months (May 2025 – February 2026), capturing ~3,800 distinct running sessions and ~566,000 wheel rotation events.
- Hardware & Sensor Setup: Wired a Hall-effect magnetic revolution sensor alongside a DHT22 temperature and humidity sensor to a headless Raspberry Pi, streaming data via a Python daemon configured as a systemd service.
- Distance & Endurance Records: Logged a peak single-night distance of ~6.3 km (August 28, 2025) and an uninterrupted continuous run of 1.15 km (48.5 minutes), with a remarkably stable cruising median speed of ~1.1 km/h.
- Behavioral Insights Discovered: Proved nocturnal activity is strictly circadian-governed and that increased exercise volume scales with session duration rather than sprinting speed. Habitat climate (temperature and humidity) showed minor modulation, but innate biological rhythm decisively drove activity.
- Reliability Improvements & Open Data: Iterated chew-resistant physical enclosures and watchdog auto-restart scripts to sustain 8 months of headless uptime, culminating in open-sourcing the full longitudinal CSV dataset for public behavioral research.
