IOT 3D Printed Automatic Cat Feeder
Posted: Sun Aug 26, 2018 2:20 pm
So I wanted to make something fun but practical for my entry. Procrastinated a while until one day while sitting on the couch I looked over and saw this.
That's our cat Nala trying to camouflage herself into that chair. She gave me the perfect inspiration. Lazy cat deserves a lazy owner. So I decided to go with an IOT automatic cat feeder. Here is a short video of what the final version looks like.
I'm quite pleased with its simplicity and its practical nature. I used a small servo with the ESP32. Inside there is also a RTC to set up an automatic feeding schedule with portion sizes. The red push button overrides the schedule and does a manual feeding. The active buzzer sounds when feeding, sure to induce Pavlovian conditioning. And since the ESP32 has wifi built in and we are going with the lazy approach, I added a web server with a push button and some info to be able to control it from any smart phone or internet browser.
Some more photos of the internals and a screenshot of the web page from my phone.
A few thing left to do:
* Paint the Pringles can
* Possibly add a proximity sensor to sense if the bowl overflows
* Tweak the code to be able to change the feeding times from the browser rather than being hardcoded
* Teach Nala how to push the button so she can feed herself, haha
Here is the BOM:
All for under $15, minus the cat food 
Comments are always welcome Hope you enjoy my build and thank you for reading
- IOTCatFeeder - 4.jpg (1.25 MiB) Viewed 11290 times
I'm quite pleased with its simplicity and its practical nature. I used a small servo with the ESP32. Inside there is also a RTC to set up an automatic feeding schedule with portion sizes. The red push button overrides the schedule and does a manual feeding. The active buzzer sounds when feeding, sure to induce Pavlovian conditioning. And since the ESP32 has wifi built in and we are going with the lazy approach, I added a web server with a push button and some info to be able to control it from any smart phone or internet browser.
Some more photos of the internals and a screenshot of the web page from my phone.
SpoilerShow
- IOTCatFeeder - 1.jpg (2.01 MiB) Viewed 11290 times
- IOTCatFeeder - 6.png (244.95 KiB) Viewed 11290 times
- IOTCatFeeder - 7.png (249.84 KiB) Viewed 11290 times
- IOTCatFeeder - 2.jpg (244.63 KiB) Viewed 11290 times
* Paint the Pringles can
* Possibly add a proximity sensor to sense if the bowl overflows
* Tweak the code to be able to change the feeding times from the browser rather than being hardcoded
* Teach Nala how to push the button so she can feed herself, haha
Here is the BOM:
SpoilerShow
Comments are always welcome Hope you enjoy my build and thank you for reading
