Build a Cat Feeder with Simple Tools

If you’d like to make an IoT animal feeder, but don’t feel like you have the necessary tools like a 3D printer, lathe, or milling machine, hacker “Mom Will Be Proud” shows off how you can create your own smart food dispenser using little more than a rotary tool, knife, and pliers. His design uses a Pringles can to store the food, and a shorter soup-style can to act as the bottom of the dispenser, and to hold a hobby servo.

Each can has an angled opening cut in it, enabling the servo to rotate the top can, aligning both slots to allow the food to drop. The top can position is then reversed to seal the gap.

As shown in the video around 5:30, it works quite well, feeding the kitty who immediately responds by leaving his house for a snack. Example Arduino feeder code can be found here, but as noted, this simple device would work with any microcontroller capable of producing a PWM output.

If you’d like even more cat interaction goodness —as outlined in this Hackster blog post— you can check out this live stream of this and other kitty entertainment gadgets in action via this live stream. It even lets you control the setup via text commands!