Treat dispensers are old hat around here, but what if kitty doesn’t need the extra calories — and actually needs to drop some pounds? [MethodicalMaker] decided to link the treat dispenser to a cat wheel, and reward kitty for healthy behaviors. The dispenser can be programmed to make the cat run long enough to burn the calories of its treat. Over time, kitty can be trained to run longer between treats to really melt off the pounds.
The wheel itself is an off the shelf model called “One Fast Cat”; apparently these are quite cheap second hand as most cats don’t really see the point in exercise. [MethodicalMaker] glued evenly-spaced magnets along the rim in order to track the rotation with a hall effect sensor. A microcontroller is watching said sensor, and is programmed to release the treats after counting off a set number of revolutions. Control over the running distance and manual treat extrusion is via web portal, but the networking code had difficulty on the Arduino R4 [MethodicalMaker] started with, so he switched to an ESP32 to get it working.
The real interesting part of this project is the physical design of the treat dispenser: it uses a double-auger setup to precisely control treat release. The first auger lives inside a hopper that holds a great many treats, but it tended to over-dispense so [MethodicalMaker] methodically made a second auger that sits beneath the hopper. The handful of treats extruded by the first auger are dispensed individually by the second auger, aided by a photosensor inside the exit chute to count treats. This also lets the machine signal when it needs refilling. For precise control, continuous servos are used to drive the augers. Aside from the electronics, everything is 3D printed; the STLs are on Printables, and the code is on GitHub.
If you don’t have a cat wheel, DIY is an option. If you don’t have a cat, we’ve also highlighted dog treat dispensers. If you don’t have either, check with your local animal shelter; we bet good money there are oodles ready to adopt in your town, and then you’ll have an excuse to enter one of your projects into our ongoing Pet Hacks Contest.
Make it human sized and dispense donuts and you have the next new fitness fad.
You would need to jog at least 20 minutes to get a donut. It might be easier to start with a smaller treat– timbits maybe? (That’s doughnut holes for you non-Canucks out there.)
Keep the treats principle, but use the lazy cat’s energy to recharge a USB bank. Let’s use cats to recharge our phones!
Needs refilled? Can we please stop it with this grammatical nonsense? Is it too much to ask a writer to use proper English?
We can stop! We did stop. We fixed it.
I wonder if it would work better if the timing of treat-dispensing became more random after the cats have learned it? And/or sound a bell (or other nice sound) before dispensing a treat. Do it long enough and the bell becomes the reward itself.
“most cats don’t really see the point of exercise”. Quite. The exercise my cat gets is either pouncing on a string I pull or running around for no apparent reason. I’ve always been a bit doubtful about these cat-sized hamster wheels.
Please make this for humans and plug it into the electrical grid.
End obesity and produce electricity.
Save the world
Cats ARE automatic dog treat dispensers.
Double yum!
Still warm.
Dogs get so happy they find their human and give them a big sloppy kiss.
Also note bright red, cheap, super transfer lipstick on cats butthole experiment.
You’ll never un-see all the places your cat’s bunghole touches in one day.
That butthole lipstick experiment sounds like some the IgNobel prize committee would be interested in.