Hi All,
I hope you are well.
I have an idea in my mind to build a pet feeder that is controlled by an independent mechanism or an automation of the home assistant.
The background:
A pet in question requires a dry pellet and the aim is to dispense it from a container to keep it dry rather than leave it exposed to the air and let it absorb the moisture from the surrounding what renders it bland.
If I let the pet to dispense the pellet by itself it is clever enough to dispense it all by moving a mechanical contraption or by pressing a button continuously.
So I have to come up with something else. A timed mechanism or a mechanism that is resistant to overuse.
Dry pellet feeders are fairly common, however most press coverage focused on cloud infrastructure failures. Basically, without remote cloud control to dispense a timed feed, the pet starved - yes, really!
Cue tales of frantic international calls from a holiday resort to friends back home to break-in and feed a rather miffed pet.
There are a few homebrew designs for 3D printing which might work locally with ESPhome…
Commercial products that can’t perform even the most basic function without an international Internet connection are a strong case for privacy, choice, and sustainability…
This is an important point, you need redundancy on both dispensing and power. We bought the Xiaomi pet feeder 2 before we had a week away from home to feed our two cats. With scheduling on the device and battery backup this will dispense food even in the event of a power and internet outage.
I have seen them but I don’t want these, they cannot be attached to the cage, are made of plastic that would be destroyed by the pet or I would have to cover it with some metal shielding.
yeah I agree, this brings a question:
should the automation be controlled by HA that is not redundant?
Most likely not
So perhaps HA could at least monitor the redundant and independent dispensing system in case the backup goes down as well or both feeders get clogged or something.
Please note that I research this not because of holidays but primarily I want to see if I can reduce the food waste.
it’s not some little monster like the Tasmanian Devil but it chews through stuff and destroys whatever it can put its sharp teeth on.
It will definitely be motivated to chew through a clear plastic container with food inside, that’s for sure
