Dear community,
I am looking for an Arduino programmer who can help me in redproducing/upgrading an automatic electric cat feeder. This machine is rather sophisticated in what it can do and how it works but unfortunately the company which produced it does not exist anymore so support is actually not existing and once the thing breaks it will be difficult to get a replacement since there is virtually no alternative on the market.
This is the link to the original machine: Catsomat
So what can it do right now and where would I see areas of improvement.
1. It has a rotating dish with 7 places for food. Times can be set so that the dish rotates and give a new portion of food to the cat. Any time can be set, also on several days.
2. It COOLS the food. Yes, that’s right. There is a thermoelectric cooler in there which cools the inside of the machine to a temperature down to 8degC. Here, in Malaysia it does not get that low due to the warm outside temperature but it still cools the wet food inside and keeps it eatable throughout a day. So of course there is a thermometer inside that measures the temperature.
3. There is a light barrier which detects if the cat is leaning into the dish. This is to prevent the cat head of paws getting stuck in the dish while rotating.
4. It has a spare battery so that it will not lose its programming in case of a power cut. It will still rotate but will not cool when running on the battery
5. It has a little speaker and microphone to record a sound or message. This is played when the dish rotates so the cat knows that there is food coming. It really work…my cat will walk to the machine (if he is not already there) when he hears to message.
6. IF necessary there is also a heating element in there. So the food in the next part of the dish can be heated up before it rotates to be eaten. This might make sense when the food gets cooled down to 8 degC since this is too cold to be eaten directly but I am not using it. It should be included but is not the most important.
Things it cannot do at the moment and that should be improved.
1. Whenever the machine is opened the dish rotates back to compartment number 1. It is not possible to “fast forward” to the next ones, for example to give some food earlier or if there was a reason to open the machine in the mid of a feeding cycle. So free control of the dish would be great.
2. At the moment everything is controlled on a small blue/white display and it seems that this is degrading. So the display needs to be replaced but ideally it would be great to be able to control this thing from a PC or app. When the company still existed they were talking about including a web cam and internet (or at least intranet) support. Of course this would have to be super save in terms of internet security.
3. There was also the plan to include a microchip reader to identify the cat that is in front of the machine (in case you have got more than one) but I don’t think that this is a priority.
I think this is it.
I am not necessarily thinking about rebuilding the whole thing since the hardware (case, dish, insulation) is there already. I am mainly worried about the controls and electronic parts going bust at some point. So ideally everything would either be fitted into the machine or maybe the control parts could be placed outside whereas things like the rotating motor and dish and sensors just stay where they are.
So…is there anybody out there who would like to help me with this.
If so, drop me a message and lets have a chat about it.
Cheers,
Merc
Arduino programming project, design and program automatic cat feeder