Automatic cat feeder1/28/2024 ![]() But I quickly concluded this was probably not a good idea based as many of the components inside were custom. My first thought was just to take the current one, gut it, and use it’s innards with a Raspberry Pi to make it suck less. So this seemed like a good chance to learn. I’ve built computers from components, done some wiring, but never built a custom piece of hardware. So Let’s Build A Better Oneīefore this project, almost the entirety of my professional experience has been in software. It can’t be that hard to build a better one. And, imagine that, it still sucks just as much as it ever did. So I grumbled, and got the Petmate back out of the attic. We really needed the ability to feed them on a schedule, a controlled portion to keep them at a healthy weight. Too much weight, in fact, because they were overeating. But then we noticed our cats were gaining weight. We just kinda made due by pouring food out in the mornings and evenings. So when we got two new cats last year, I at first resisted getting the Petmate back out. When we had to put Pumpkin down, I happily put it in the attic and was content to (hopefully) never have to think about it again. 0/10 do not recommend, and if you own one I suggest you set it on fire and mail the remains back to the manufacturer COD.įor the longest time, we just grumbled at how much it sucked and dealt with it. This is literally one of the most garbage products I have ever owned. Which is a big deal if you’re relying on this thing to feed the cats while we’re out of town for the weekend. About 50% of the time, it wouldn’t even feed my cats despite always incrementing the feed number. I tried taking it apart and cleaning it out thinking maybe a kibble got jammed somewhere.īut nope. ![]() I even tried only filling it up halfway or a quarter of the way to see if maybe there was just too much weight on the motor. You’d load it up with food and, when the scheduled feed time came, it would either just not feed at all, or do this wimpy thing where kinda tried to spin the motor for a fraction of a second. Third, and perhaps most importantly, sometimes it legitimately just would not work. My default setting was just to not touch it until I absolutely had to. And that’s not including adjusting it for daylight savings time - which I usually never bothered to do because this thing is such a bear to deal with. Every few weeks you have to reset the clock back to the current time. So a 7am feeding becomes a 5am feeding within a few months. And those batteries last just long enough for you to forget how you programmed it. It has no wiring for mains electrical or even an adapter, just D-cell batteries. I’m a software engineer with nearly 20 years of experience, but programming this thing I’m reduced to one of those apes from the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey, banging on it with a bone until I get it to do what I want it to do.Īnd even worse, every time you change the batteries, it loses the program. Thankfully, some kind soul put the instructions on their blog because I would have been lost without it. And if you lost the manual (as I did), you’re on your own. The controls on it do not make sense and are not labeled in any such way as to indicate how to program it. It may have the worst UX of any consumer product I have ever encountered. First of all, it is very nearly impossible to program this thing.
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