IDEA:I have two cats and one of them is on a special diet which made the other cat lose a lot of weight. So, I need a way to feed them different food and allow the skinny one to eat at any time. That's why I decided to build an RFID pet feeder.
WHAT WORKS:- Temporarily I'm using a gutted old CD-ROM drive to drive the lid. It opens the lid when skinny cat arrives and closes it when he leaves.
- Arduino to control the CD-ROM drive. I wrote the code to control the lid and it fully works.
- WiFly Shield so that the feeder can connect to a website. I have a bunch of ideas for settings/control via this site. I was able to make this work too. Right now it connects to my server and sends the MAC address of the WiFi card over and the server saves it into a database.
- ID-20 RFID reader with a couple tags to test. I have code that polls for tags 4 times a second and works OK. The only problem is that the internal antenna only provides a reading distance of about 2".
- Domain name for my server: http://www.smartfeeder.net
WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE:- Antenna: this is what I'm currently working on and can make or break this project. I need to be able to get a reading distance of at least 6-8" for this project to succeed. Ted helped me with laser cutting a design I made for the structure that holds the coil and JB Zurn is helping me figuring out the exact number of turns I need to achieve the optimal frequency of 125kHz. Thank you both for your help!
- Website: This is what I do for a living so most likely I will be able to handle this.
- Enclosure: I have some basic ideas about the structure but I will definitely need help with designing this. Anybody has experience with enclosure design?
MAYBE LATER:- Lid mechanism: After all the above is done and I still have time, I'd like to come up with a mechanism for the lid that doesn't involve gutted CD-ROM drives and relies only on parts I can make/buy. This will most likely affect the enclosure design as well.
- WiFi password input method: The last thing I'll have to figure out is how a user can tell the device what their WiFi password is. I have the following ideas:
- use Bluetooth shield and build a mobile app
- use LCD screen and a couple of buttons
- use touch screen with on-screen keyboard
- USB port connect to PC/Mac
- a camera which can recognize QR code and a mobile app to generate it; also the website could generate it and could be printed
