2025 Pet Hacks Contest: Automatic Treat Dispenser Makes Kitty Work For It
1 min read
Summary
An engineer who goes by MethodicalMaker on Hackaday.io has made a treat dispenser for his overweight cat that is linked to a ‘One Fast Cat’ cat exercise wheel.
The idea is that the dispenser releases a treat only once the cat has exercised long enough to burn off the calories in the treat.
The wheel has been fitted with hall effect sensors that are monitored by a microcontroller to count the number of revolutions made by the wheel to determine when a treat should be released.
Double augers are used to control the release of the treats, a photosensor is used to count them and determine when the dispenser needs refilling.
All the parts are 3D printable and the code and stl files are available on Github and Printables respectively.
