7 ms·
Fixing a broken smart cat feeder with ESP32
- blacksmith_tb 3y agoIt's a nice high-level writeup of getting a flakey piece of consumer electronics back in service, though he used an ESP8266, so I am not sure about the title.
- kashunstva 3y agoTo add more to the confusion, twice in the text of TFA he refers to an ESP8622, which AFAIK isn’t a thing. The ESP8266 is fine in this application of course since he’s using a single GPIO pin.
- paradox460 3y agoAccidental Dyscalculia
- kramerger 3y agoI think the author is not an embedded guy and assumed that ESP32 is the generic name given to these sort of devices. Either way, I am sure this was a fun project and he achieved what he wanted to do. But if this happened to me I would probably try to reverse engineer the device to free it from PetNet cloud. It would be fun and cool and interesting and I would probably never finish it..
- paradox460 3y agoThere are a few projects out there that were based around reverse-engineering, and running a local server with DNS hijacking to make the feeder use them as its CC server[1]. But I mostly just wanted something that could sit happily in HomeAssistant along with all the other automations, so ESPhome based device it is And yeah, I'm not an embedded guy, but I've updated the article with an addendum [1]: https://github.com/feedernet/petnet-feeder-service/wiki/Getting-Started https://github.com/feedernet/petnet-feeder-service/wiki/Gett...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- MPSimmons 3y agoI haven't done as much with it, but I've also been very impressed with ESPhome. Seems like a really great piece of software, and super extensible. The list of supported components is extensive: https://esphome.io/components/index.html https://esphome.io/components/index.html
- baby_souffle 3y agoI use it extensively and it really is awesome. It’s not perfect, but the limits I run into aren’t what 80+% of users will ever hit. Even if hacky and ugly, you can work around most of the limitations
- invertigo 3y agoI love Home Assistant but I have yet to venture into the ESP32 board route of things. Can someone point to a good guide to getting started with these boards? How much soldering and/or microcontroller experience is needed?
- lakid 3y agoM5stack makes nice plug and play hardware too, almost like Lego https://m5stack.com/ https://m5stack.com/
- ben_ 3y agoThey're pretty great and compatible with most things. ESPHome [1] is a great resource for getting ESP32's working nicely with HA and you can find lots of projects using it to learn from. You'll likely need to do soldering if you want to connect sensors, batteries and the like. Personally I really like what SEEED Studio [2] does with their ESP32 boards and they have nice docs. 1. https://esphome.io/ https://esphome.io/ 2. https://www.seeedstudio.com/home-assistant https://www.seeedstudio.com/home-assistant
- nikhilgk 3y agoYou could get a dev board and a breakout board on aliexpress for less than $6 - this way you can get away without any soldering for most use cases. And if you use esphome and homeassistant, pretty much all code is just configuration and setup in homeassistant.
- mft_ 3y agoYou can easily get ESP8266/ESP32 boards with header pins already soldered on; combine this with some DuPont cables (as I’ve just learned they’re called) and you can start messing around with things without much soldering at all. You can also connect to e.g. LED strips and simple sensors in the same way. See this kit for example: https://a.aliexpress.com/_EyZhdw5 https://a.aliexpress.com/_EyZhdw5
- XorNot 3y agohttps://www.athom.tech/ https://www.athom.tech/ are selling a lot of pre-flashed gear in nice casings which is essentially "plug and play ready to go" - out of the box you can wirelessly flash them. So depending on what you're doing, they're an excellent place to start.
- NegativeLatency 3y ago> This thing is covered in sensors; it's got two scales, ostensibly for measuring the weight of the hopper and the weight of food dispensed, a pair of infrared sensors to detect when the hooper is empty, sensors that monitor the motor's turning, and others that I haven't figured out the purpose of. Bad for business if your cat feeder fails to feed the customer's cat and they return from a trip to a very hungry cat.
- quercusa 3y agoHow could you tell? Don't they usually act as if they're starving?
- stavros 3y agoIt'd be much skinnier and/or dead.
- brewdad 3y agoIt’s pining for the fjords.
- thecatspaw 3y agoYou shouldnt leave a cat alone for that long anyway for that to become a concern. Indoor cats become bored very quickly if they dont get enough playtime
- shiroiuma 3y agoYeah, that sentence shows me that this guy isn't an engineer at all, he's just a hacker. If he made his own automatic litter box (the rotating drum kind) for his cat, he'll also not see the point of all those sensors that "aren't really needed", and one day he'll come home to find his cat chopped in half.
- ginko 3y agoThis take is unnecessarily negative. OP could be very aware of the limitations of their chosen approach and use the feeder accordingly.
- mschuster91 3y ago> Complex in that they built so much more functionality into the device than was really needed. This thing is covered in sensors; it's got two scales, ostensibly for measuring the weight of the hopper and the weight of food dispensed, a pair of infrared sensors to detect when the hooper is empty, sensors that monitor the motor's turning, and others that I haven't figured out the purpose of. I'd love if Surefeed, a competitor, had gone the way of shipping more sensors. Instead, they just monitor the current going through the motor to detect if the lid is closed or opened (the current will spike when it reaches either end position)... and the motor is relatively powerful, powerful enough in fact to shred the plastic gears. It's laughable - this thing consists of a few pieces of plastic, an RFID antenna loop, a motor and a tiny PCB, but costs 160€.
- stavros 3y agoA current sensor is much better than a position sensor, as you don't want to keep trying to close the lid if it catches on anything.
- mschuster91 3y agoA rotation sensor would detect a blocked gear just as fine, maybe even faster than a current monitor - with the advantage of the rotation sensor being unimpeded by slack in the gear train.
- stavros 3y agoWhy is the current sensor impeded by slack? It's also much cheaper and more reliable.
- mschuster91 3y agoBy the time the current monitor senses the spike, a lot of tension can build up in the gear train from slack and torsion. A rotation sensor on the outermost axle can detect a blockage way earlier.
- paxys 3y agoWhat if I have a dumb cat?
- dole 3y agoUse 555s
- twisteriffic 3y agoI bought a cat food dispenser for $5 at goodwill and plugged it into a $10 "inching" timer plug from AliExpress. 10 seconds every 4 hours. It's the dumbest smart feeder I could make for the dumbest best cat.
- schiffern 3y ago>$10 "inching" timer plug Thanks, I didn't know these existed. Another useful "midwit" device to add to the list. https://dynomight.substack.com/p/midwit-home https://dynomight.substack.com/p/midwit-home https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37859437 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37859437
- kramerger 3y agoNow this is my kind of engineering! KISS in action is beautiful, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
- onli 3y agoCould you link to a cat food dispenser this works with? The one I have gives food whenever the electricity gets turned on as part of its startup process, but way too much. Edit: Ah, if it's from goodwill that might be not as easy...
- twisteriffic 3y agoIt's one of these https://www.homehealthcareshoppe.com/buy-ergo-auto-pet-feeder-large-26-11-11-online https://www.homehealthcareshoppe.com/buy-ergo-auto-pet-feede... Big hopper with a plastic auger at the bottom, driven by a gear motor similar to the one that runs a dryer timer. Very simple, no sensors beyond motor overheat. Mine is slightly modified because the idiot cat ate the spout off the end of the auger mechanism. I cobbled together a replacement that's tougher than her.
- bigyikes 3y agoI built a smart treat dispenser for my cat using an ESP32. The best feature is the little speaker inside that plays the Meowmix jingle when dispensing. My cat is now conditioned to come running when she hears that sound. I connected it to my Apple Home network via Home Assistant, and it works great. I can tell Siri to give the cat a snack, and off she goes.
- shiroiuma 3y ago>The best feature is the little speaker inside that plays the Meowmix jingle when dispensing. My cat is now conditioned to come running when she hears that sound. Are you sure you don't have that backwards? Maybe she conditioned you to spend your time building a gadget to play her favorite tune.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoBy the way, .su is the Soviet Union country code top level domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.su For weird reasons, the Soviet Union still officially exists in the Internet and it seems to be growing.
- KingOfCoders 3y agoSmart cat feeder? Cat Smart Feeder?
- ijhuygft776 3y agoesp32s and esp8266s are my favorite pieces of hardware... for $2 you can setup a wifi access point or many other crazy things https://github.com/martin-ger/esp_wifi_repeater https://github.com/martin-ger/esp_wifi_repeater
- tedchs 3y agoThis is a clever hack. However, if the intent is serious use, I'd be concerned about resiliency. It sounds like the schedule is maintained in Home Assistant, and that it sends a command to the ESP8266 to dispense food. That means a ton of moving parts have to all be working, otherwise the cat doesn't eat: Home Assistant's server and power source, Wi-Fi, and the $1 microcontroller. If this is intended for serious usage, i.e. the cat won't eat if it fails to dispense, a different design would be more resilient: maybe still define the schedule in Home Assistant or another control plane, but then have it "push" the whole schedule to the device. The device will also need time sync and a realtime clock. Then, the device manages its scheduled dispensation autonomously, even if the network or control plane are unavailable. And, the dispenser should have a little battery so it can run for a couple days with the power out.
- paradox460 3y agoHi, post author here ESPhome timers are actually local to the ESP device. They just depend on a time signal for timekeeping. For now, the time is sent by HomeAssistant, but I could stick an RTC or GPS timesource on the ESP,and have it run 100% locally. But since this is mostly supplemental food for dental concerns, and he still gets two bowls of wet every day, its not really an issue