Share My Creation JG eCatFeeder

freedom2000 · Dec 10, 2017

Hi all,

Here is my latest creation an AI powered cat feeder

Inside is a 3D printed mechanism with an auger allowing to push out the pellets.

Here is a picture taken from the bottom side :
a servo (on the bottom right) rotates gears and the auger which is into a PVC pipe.

That's all for the mechanics

Now electronics side :
The front face is equiped with a PIR sensor and an android smartphone (screen is dead but the camera works !)

And finally the other side :

And now the software :

- The PIR sensor wakes up the ESP8266
- if it's time (NTP connection) to feed the cat, then the ESP8266 sends a firebase notification
- the smartphone is registered to this notification. It wakes up
- a cat detection is launched (THANKS to @JordiCP for his wonderful OpenCV lib and all his help )
- if it is a cat then the smartphone which has connected to the ESP8266 via UDP, sends a feed notification
- the ESP8266 launches the auger rotation
- and meanwhile the smartphone streams a video of your beloved cat over internet !

Well does it work ?

Yes here is my cat detected with Jordi's software!

And finally a video of the system running :

To be totally honest I must admit that I do have a few false detections of my cat...

[edit] : new version with a balance to weight the food (see post #26)
now the plate "floats" just above the ground !

Marko Druskovic · Dec 14, 2017

I use Erel example https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/threads/esp8266-wifi-remote-configuration.68596/ to setup ESP8266 and create server.
Then I configure portforward on myrouter to get access to the feeder outside wifi. I also connect wifi camera to another port.
Android app comunicate with feeder via http and with camera thought RTSP.

victormedranop · Dec 17, 2017

I need that for my mother un law. Excelente.

thedesolatesoul · Dec 18, 2017

Amazing.
Question: How long can the food last outside of a sealed container? Would you be able to use this for short vacations, and would you rely on it or is it too risky?

Marko Druskovic · Dec 18, 2017

thedesolatesoul said:
Amazing.
Question: How long can the food last outside of a sealed container? Would you be able to use this for short vacations, and would you rely on it or is it too risky?

Thank you. I used it this summer while I was 10 days on vacation. It all went fine. My wife and I laughed as we fed our cat and watched over the camera. ;-)

freedom2000 · Dec 18, 2017

thedesolatesoul said:
Amazing.
Question: How long can the food last outside of a sealed container? Would you be able to use this for short vacations, and would you rely on it or is it too risky?

Hi,

Thanks

I must say that it has now been working for more than one week without problem.
I wouldn't however put it outside as pellets are quite sentitive to humidity. In my system, if you at the video, there is a kind of "anti jaming" protocol which works really well, but who knows if pellets would survive to outside conditions (in winter times) ?

freedom2000 · Dec 22, 2017

Marko Druskovic said:
I use Erel example https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/threads/esp8266-wifi-remote-configuration.68596/ to setup ESP8266 and create server.
Then I configure portforward on myrouter to get access to the feeder outside wifi. I also connect wifi camera to another port.
Android app comunicate with feeder via http and with camera thought RTSP.

Hi

My question wasn't a software one but an hardware one

I just wanted to know how the pellets were going down (apart from the servo).

JP

freedom2000 · Dec 29, 2017

Hi,

It was Xmas for my cat... I gave up the idea of the face detection. It worked but was too slow to boot.

Another drawback was that I was always feeding the cat with the same amount of food. So sometimes too much when the cat wasn't hungry...

I decided to mod a little my cafeeder to add a balance to weight the food.
A simple load cell + a Hx711 interface circuit, and now !!!!

and now :
- always the same quantity of food into the plate
- a real time monitoring of the weight which allows to detect the cat "eating" and to post a notification for the camera streaming
- a detection of empty tank plus a notification to alarm you

Share My Creation JG eCatFeeder

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