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Edwin Eefting edited this page Aug 2, 2020 · 72 revisions

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Introduction

The Meowton project was designed to measure the weight of your pets and automatically feed your pets according to their diets.

The whole project is designed with modularity and flexibility in mind. It's perfectly possible to only use parts of this project and modify things for your situation.

Although I created this for cats, I hope someone will soon create a modified version for dogs or other situations. Ill try to update the wiki with links to interesting modified versions.

How does it work?

Check out the live stream of my cats using the system

Preview of the new mobile webinterface: https://youtu.be/MHWvX9gfuJ0

The full system uses all the modules mentioned below and is the one i currently use to successfully diet one of my cats:

  • Each cat has a certain food quota per day. The quota is increase every minute, and decreased whenever the cat is eating. This spreads the food over the day as much as possible, and still allows your cat to choose when he wants to eat.
  • The scale will identify the cat by its weight. (No RFID support yet, so the weights of the cats should be in different ranges)
  • As long as the quota of the cat is >0, the dispenser will keep dispensing food. (if the bowl is empty)
  • The food scale measures exactly how much your cat eats and updates the quota.
  • When the cat leaves the scale, the collected data will be send to the database.
  • When all the cats have a positive quota, the system will also dispense food in the bowl. This way the cats know when its feeding time, and prevents them from obsessively hanging around the scale.
  • Added bonus is that you can sometimes detect your cat is sick, because of sudden weight changes.

Meowton modules

These are the modules:

  • The cat scale to measure your pets while it's eating. [REQUIRED]
  • The food dispenser to automatically dispense food according to your pets diet. [REQUIRED]
  • The food scale to measure exactly how much each pet is eating. [REQUIRED]
  • The electronics to control everything and show stuff on a display. [REQUIRED]
  • The software has a nice webinterface to view the status and configure stuff. [REQUIRED]
  • The database to record weight and food intake and create nice graphs. (InfluxDB + Grafana) Also shows you if your pet is loosing or gaining weight too fast. [OPTIONAL]
  • The RFID scanner to identify your pet by their microchip (not created yet)

Below we will describe all the modules.

The cat scale

  • Weighs your pets while they are eating.
  • Works with multiple pets, but weights need to be in different ranges. (e.g. never cross each other.)
  • Great to monitor diets and health.
  • Optionally use Meowton-database to track progress.
  • Can be used as a general purpose precision scale for other projects (max 20kg?)

Build instructions.

The food dispenser

  • Can spread a daily food quota out over the whole day.
  • Can dispense fairly small portions. (a few grams)
  • To feed/diet multiple cats and also prevent "cheating" by food stealing, combine with Meowton-cat-scale and Meowton-food-scale.
  • Usuable as a standalone food dispenser for other projects.

Build instructions.

The food scale

  • Can measure amount of eaten food in realtime.
  • Is precise enough to measure weight of individual food chunks.
  • Is build to measure small portions (fits up to 10g?), used in combination with Meowton-food-dispenser.
  • Can be used as standalone generic purpose precision scale for other projects.

Build instructions.

The electronics

  • Always required, unless you use something else.
  • Display is optional. (currently disabled in software, use the webinterface)
  • Based on one ESP32 with micropython.
  • Currently using a breadboard, but ill try to make a nice PCB in the future.

Build instructions.

The database

  • Can collect food and weight stats.
  • The white line shows average weight measured each day.
  • The green area shows safe weight change range. (currently +/- 1% of body weight per week)
  • The yellow dots is the total of amount of food eaten per day.
  • Uses InfluxDB and Grafana.
  • TODO: I'll try to provide a public database that can be used for free.
  • Example: https://snapshot.raintank.io/dashboard/snapshot/409BpeEfwtKrdCaWA6GnIHySgh69k2VS

More info.

The RFID scanner

  • Can be used to identify pets if their weight is similar.

Still a work in progress: Reading a pet-rfid-chip while they are eating is a bit difficult but should be possible.

This was the best reader i could find: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/134-2K-Long-distance-RFID-AGV-Animal-Tag-Reader-Module-TTL-Interface-ISO11784-85-FDX-B/32833759686.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.27424c4dm3EOa9

Its quite expensive and i still wasnt able to read the chip reliable during eating. Have to do some more reseach and testing.

There are other commercial products that use their own solution and coils. Maybe print and wind our own huge coil that the cat can step through? Or under the scale?

Tips and help are welcome.

More info

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