Fully Automated Cat Feeding with RFID!

Member of the community Ken sent in his amazing cat feeding station project.  Taking existing commercially available components he was able to fully police his cats eating habits.  Check Ken out on Twitter HERE.

From Ken:

We have two cats, Gypsy and George. Gypsy likes to over-eat which means that George does not always get as much as he should (Life is never easy with pets).

Our solution was to build two cat feeding stations. I was able to get two PetSmart pet doors, this is the small version (the doors use 4 “D” cell to power the motor that moves them up to unlatch and down to latch). Each door has a battery operated fob that attaches to cats collars. Each fob sends a different code so that only the correct cat can get into their own feeding station. I also purchased two laundry baskets to mount the doors into to make a light enclosure.

Some Photos:

Front View and Fob (on the right not actual size) which will only open the door for one feeder

The door controls (shown below) have two buttons one to set the operation and the other to learn the fob that controls it. There is a dial to set the distance and three LED’s red, green and yellow which are used to show the state the door is in. They only come on for a short time during the state setting. The red one will blink when the batteries are low.

Close up of the control panel

 

Edge on view
 

The laundry baskets were not tall enough so I added four 4” 2×2 on the corners of the bottom of the basket and covered them with some left over corrugated plastic we had left over from the roof or our back yard sunshade. On one basket, I had to cover up the ”handle hole” on the far end. Gypsy would reach in to try to get food out of the food dish. I had saved some plastic handles that are used on electronics packing boxes (such as laptop computers and printers) which I put on the top of the feeding station so it could be lifted easily.

Gypsy’s feeding station has a battery operated 5 bowl feeding station that will move at set times so she gets a 1/3 of a meal three times a day.

5 Bowl feeder open & 5 Bowl feeder closed

Clock and adjusting switches for time and rotate times for the 5 bowl feeder.

This has made policing meal time much easier (and this project makes life easier with pets).

Ken Heinrich

 

Thanks ken for sharing your build!