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  • Author Author: ntewinkel
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Cat Treat Dispenser

ntewinkel

Inspired by Frederick van den Bosch's Forget Me Not Project I decided to build my own cat treat dispenser.

 

For me the main challenge was in the mechanics of it all, so having 's design to help me out made a world of difference.

 

I picked up an old pop bottle, and I already had a fairly big servo I could use. For the mechanism I used parts from a $3 dollar store Meccano-knockoff kit.

In this picture, the unit is held up by my "helping hands" - normally used to hold things while soldering. I still need to build a platform to hold this for the final build.

image

 

The smarts are provided by an Arduino Pro Mini. It has a switch that you push to dispense the treats - ultimately this will have some kind of lever that we'll try to train the cats to use so they can treat themselves image  Maybe a future version will use a Raspberry Pi with webcam and remote dispensing for when we're away.

I power the whole thing using a USB power bank that contains an 18650 lithium battery. That seems to have enough juice to run it, though I don't know for how long. No need to be near an outlet that way.

 

Here is a video of how it works. I did try with treats, and tuned it to dispense just a small handful. After dispensing, the unit waits for 5 seconds before it will dispense again - that's to keep it from being abused by an overzealous kitty (it could happen!). The green light stays on for the time it is pausing, so I know what it's doing.

I also added some smarts to prevent it from dispensing again if the button has not been released - in case the button gets stuck on.

 

 

Cheers,

-Nico

Parents

  • It has a switch that you push to dispense the treats - ultimately this will have some kind of lever that we'll try to train the cats to use so they can treat themselves

    So it's not really a treat dispenser but a food dispenser .....

     

    Otherwise I'm certain the cats are the master in your house.

     

    Mark

  • in reply to mcb1

    LOL well yeah they own the place and let us live here.

     

    The "treats" are actually regular cat food, but it was a smaller sample bag of the same brand they already eat (just a different flavour) and because it's from a small bag it's somehow special... silly kitties.

     

    Charlie has us trained - whenever we're in the kitchen he hammers at the food cabinet door to get us to give him something tasty. So I think he may be trainable to serve himself. He also has an eating problem - he eats it too quickly and then uhm presents it back to us in a not-so-fun format, so this dispenser could help to slow him down a bit.

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  • in reply to mcb1

    LOL well yeah they own the place and let us live here.

     

    The "treats" are actually regular cat food, but it was a smaller sample bag of the same brand they already eat (just a different flavour) and because it's from a small bag it's somehow special... silly kitties.

     

    Charlie has us trained - whenever we're in the kitchen he hammers at the food cabinet door to get us to give him something tasty. So I think he may be trainable to serve himself. He also has an eating problem - he eats it too quickly and then uhm presents it back to us in a not-so-fun format, so this dispenser could help to slow him down a bit.

Children