We’ve got a cool video here to ease your Friday boredom and hopefully ignite some creative sparks! This one is all about hooking your pets up with some hacker-style technology, in this case cats. According to project creator Andres Leon, this is an “Arduino-based laser controlled wireless automatic cat food dispenser.” Yes, that’s a mouthful, but watch the video and see for yourself!
The feeder machine has a timer running on the Arduino which dispenses cat food at specific time intervals. The Arduino is connected to a servo motor that rotates a cylinder containing cat food. When the cylinder rotates all the way to the bottom, a slot in the container dispenses cat food into the cat’s bowl. There is even a laser system in place to detect and set the correct position of the food container – this ensures that the cats receive the correct amount of kibble. Meow!
Andres Leon’s project has lots of other features too. There is a web interface that is capable of controlling the feeder remotely via the Internet, web cams are set up to provide a live feed of the machine executing commands (and for cat viewing!), and LEDs on the machine indicate if the feeder is enabled or disabled for feeding. Andres says his cats Mimi and Scratch got used to the sound of the motors pretty quickly, and now come running for food every time they hear the Frankensteinian machine in action.
What do you guys think? Talk amongst yourselves in the comments.
Happy Friday, and happy hacking!
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