catfeeder

Operates a cat feeder made with a cereal dispenser, servo and Raspberry Pi3. Food is dispensed with a pushbutton on the feeder or a webpage. It uses a python app to control the servo since existing python libraries for GPIO support are pretty solid. (Sorry, Go would have been preferable but too many GPIO shenanigans).

Parts List:

Fritzing Diagram

Raspberry PI Setup

Install Linux

All steps performed from OSX.

Download raspbian lite, do a fast xfer using unbuffered disk (rdisk) to copy it super fast:

sudo bash -c 'dd if=/Users/USERNAME/Downloads/2016-11-25-raspbian-jessie-lite.img | pv | dd of=/dev/rdisk# bs=1m'

Update SD card, add to bottom /boot/config.txt to disable bluetooth and allow use of debug TTL cable.
```
dtoverlay=pi3-disable-bt
systemctl disable hciuart
```
Login with screen (need TTL cable drivers)
```
sudo screen /dev/cu.usbserial 115200
```
The user / pass is pi / raspberry

Enable wifi

sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Go to the bottom of the file and add the following:

network={
    ssid="The_SSID"
    psk="Your_wifi_password"
}

Then reboot the Pi.

Add mDNS Support

sudo apt-get install avahi-daemon
echo "catfeeder" | sudo tee /etc/hostname

Then reboot the Pi.

Now the Pi should respond to catfeeder.local

Software Setup

On the Raspberry Pi, perform RPi.GPIO installation. Install packages:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install python-rpi.gpio python3-rpi.gpio python-dev

Make sure we have PIP..

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | sudo python

Install python packages

sudo pip install RPi.GPIO
sudo pip install Flask

Running the Cat Feeder

You will need to tune the number of ms in FEEDER_PORTION_TIME_MS to reflect correct portion size for your needs.

Run the app, viewable on http://catfeeder.local

sudo python catfeeder.py

To run on startup, copy catfeeder into /etc/init.d, then run:

sudo update-rc.d catfeeder defaults

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

aphexddb/catfeeder