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Automated cat feeder

Nov 23, 2019

The other weekend I was *rudely* awoken by two little bastards (my cats) wanting some food like the greedy little things they are. Whilst half asleep I decided that I could solve this problem, with the solution being I don't have to get out of bed at 5am on a weekend.

So, the obvious thing here, that has been done to death is the automated cat feeder, nothing special, it just has to dispense biscuits at a specific time (or remote controlled maybe in the future). Ok, I can do this, so I sketched up an idea:

A diagram sketch of the solution [IMG]

Pretty simple, here's a list of what it required:

• A low-tech 3D printed body which is made from layers of foam board
• A Raspberry Pi, because who doesn't already have a few lying around. In this case I used a pi0w for the ability to control it wirelessly
• A servo, to control the flow of the biscuits, I ordered these online for next day (i.e. the Sunday)
• Something for a biscuit hopper.

The software for controlling this was adapted from here[1] as it was the first search result for "Raspberry Pi Servo" 👌

1: http://reefwingrobotics.blogspot.com/2017/02/raspberry-pi-and-towerpro-sg90-micro.html

In the end, it was not a very pretty solution, but it worked and I get to sleep some time!

An animated GIF of the working prototype [IMG]

👋

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