DIY Cat Care Gadgets: Automatic Feeder and Laser Toy

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On a business trip, can’t feed the cat at home in time? Tired after working late but still need to play with the cat? Raising a cat requires so much energy! The creativity of electronics shines here – DIY automatic cat feeder and cat teaser.

✦ DIY Cat Feeder

Very easy to make! The owner sends commands to the ESP8266 via the internet, which controls the servo to rotate the grain dispenser (cat food storage) to release cat food. It is also equipped with an ultrasonic distance sensor HC-SR04, which can detect whether too much or too little cat food is provided.

The reason for choosing the ESP8266 as the main control chip is simple: it is cheap, and the ESP8266 CPU and its Wi-Fi components can be programmed just like any other Arduino device, making it easy to operate.

Circuit Diagram

Rear and Front View of the Grain Dispenser

All hardware can be purchased as ready-made modules, but when writing the code, attention must be paid to the relationship between the stepper motor’s rotation angle and the amount of food released. It is also necessary to define the distance between the food and the ultrasonic sensor.For example, when the distance between the cat food and the ultrasonic sensor is below the set threshold, even if the user sends a feeding command, the servo will not rotate.

In addition to automatic feeding, you can also send cat feeding commands by chatting with a Telegram bot. Of course, you can also design a small program yourself to complete this function.

If you don’t even have time to control the cat food remotely, there is a way to let the cat be self-sufficient.By controlling the servo with Arduino to rotate the box above to align the openings of the two boxes (similar to a toothpick box) to dispense cat food, whether Arduino emits control signals depends on whether the cat presses the button.This device is simpler and more convenient, requiring only an Arduino, servo, button, power supply, two canned boxes, and a bowl!

✦ Cat Teaser Gadget

After solving the feeding problem, it’s time to solve how to tease the cat! (Of course, this problem only occurs in lazy people)

Cats love to chase moving things, so using a laser pointer to tease the cat is very suitable.This project is an interactive cat laser game, which can be controlled via a mobile phone and also has an automatic gaming mode, a perfect combination of playfulness and laziness.

The principle of this gadget is that the phone controls the Arduino via Bluetooth, and Arduino sends control signals to the rotating gimbal, allowing the laser pointer to move in a certain trajectory to tease the cat!

How to make a gimbal that can rotate up, down, left, and right? It uses two 9G micro servos to achieve vertical and horizontal movement of the laser. If you want to do it, you can directly search for “FPV servo gimbal” online to buy it.

The laser pointer can be purchased by searching for “red laser diode” online, and then fixed (with hot melt glue or double-sided tape) on the gimbal.

Next, how to control the gimbal with the phone to move it up, down, left, and right. Here, the HC-05 Bluetooth module is used to communicate with the phone, and the mobile app used is the open-source “Arduino BlueControl” application, which Android users can find for free in the Google Play store. The app provides some buttons and sliders for development use, just configure the strings sent via Bluetooth when pressing the buttons, and ensure that these strings match those in the Arduino receiving code for normal communication.

There are two modes for the cat laser:

Manual Mode: Control the gimbal to rotate a certain angle in a certain direction by pressing the arrow button on the mobile app.

Automatic Mode: Clicking the “Auto Play” button will start the automatic teasing mode.The laser will smoothly jump from one random point to another random point.Users can also adjust the speed of the game (i.e., how fast the laser point moves) by pressing “Speed Up” or “Slow Down” to meet the needs of different cats.

Note: The Area +/- buttons will change the range of gimbal rotation, thus adjusting the entire game area to avoid the red dot moving to a place where the cat cannot see it.

Although the two projects shared this time are not very difficult, they still have certain practical value for those who have pets at home. As an electronics major, don’t you feel like you can benefit the world? Hurry up and try it!

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