The need for an automatic cat feeder is self explanatory. Cats (our cat’s name is Bella) can be obnoxious when hungry and if your cat is like mine will eat the bowl dry every time. I needed a way to dispense a controlled amount of food automatically by 3 methods – 1. Alexa voice command, 2. by a schedule, and 3. by a button in SmartThings. I also wanted a way to track how and when the cat gets fed so we don’t feed twice (sometimes when when my wife feeds the cat and then I feed the cat again 15 minutes later).
This project is not overly difficult, I am no developer, nor an engineer, but there was many resources online that helped me. I’m compiling everything I used and all the steps necessary for you to complete this project too. Enjoy, and happy building!
Make a robot friend with Adafruit’s CRICKIT – A Creative Robotics & Interactive Construction Kit. It’s an add-on to our popular Circuit Playground Express, FEATHER and other platforms to make and program robots with CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. Start controlling motors, servos, solenoids. You also get signal pins, capacitive touch sensors, a NeoPixel driver and amplified speaker output. It complements & extends your boards so you can still use all the goodies on the microcontroller, now you have a robotics playground as well.
