Automatic Cat Food Dispenser

This is a very cool Automatic Cat Food Dispenser project. Who wouldn’t want to feed their cats automatically. The project could have stopped at about 10 percent of where it is at and still accomplished the goal of automatic feeding but that would be no fun. If the project is worth doing it is worth over doing, and this is exactly what happened here. Andres Leon built this automatic cat food dispenser using an Arduino as the main automation brain, it controls a rotating drum of food that funnels food into two cat food bowls as it rotates. It is of course able to accept wireless commands from a computer and there is of course a web-cam pointed at the apparatus to watch the live action. Did I mention that a laser is used to monitor the position of the food drum? This is one total geek project! 🙂

"When the motor runs, it makes the cylinder rotate a certain amount of times. However, since the cylinder may provide varying resistance due to its weight (due to the amount of food in it) then a laser-driven sensor is also put in place to make sure the cylinder is repositioned in the right place to prevent premature spillage."