Project
| # | Title | Team Members | TA | Documents | Sponsor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Cat Food Dropper Honorable Mention |
Hailey Cho Lexie Kolb Michael Park |
Dean Biskup | design_document1.pdf final_paper1.pdf photo1.HEIC photo2.HEIC photo3.HEIC presentation1.pdf proposal1.pdf |
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| - [Hailey Cho] [hcho89] In-person - [Lexie Kolb] [abkolb2] In-person - [Michael Park] [msp7] In-person Link to Initial Post https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/ece445/pace/view-topic.asp?id=68007 [Cat Food Dropper] **Problem ** - Some cats eat their food too fast to digest it, and this causes them to throw it up - Most cats instinctively know how to portion control but some struggle to do so - When it is hard for them to stop eating it becomes an obsessive pattern - A manual solution is for a human to continuously feed the cat a small amount throughout the day; however, this is inconvenient for most owner - If the owner has more than one cat, sometimes a certain cat eats the other cat’s food as well - Current products can dispense small portions for cats, but no products on the market can regulate the cats eating speed **Solution Overview** - Food dispenser that dispenses a very small amount of food frequently (effectively like spoon-feeding the cat. - Dispensers can adjust the amount of food dispensed based on how fast the cat eats the last dispensed food. - Detect each microchip and dispense based on which cat is nearby. Allows the owner to buy one bowl to serve multiple cats and prevents one cat from stealing food to overeat - App to display statistics about the cat’s eating habits. Also acts as an interface to manually configure the bowl’s speed/manage microchipped cats. **Solution Components** - [Scale] Weight sensor to measure the weight of food in the bowl in grams. - [Wifi module] Used to communicate data collected to the app and receive configurations from the app. - [Dispenser] Dropper using a gear to dispense food one at a time. Speed can be modulated using hardware. - [Microchips] Adds ability to distinguish between cats. Implemented using collar microchip or microchip implant read by RFID/NFC reader. - [App] Communicates with the bowl via WIFI. Collects data about cat’s eating habits, and acts as a digital interface to manually control the bowl. **Criteria for Success** - Starts by dispensing a set amount of food, for example 10 kibbles, if the cat eats those kibbles too quickly, then decrease the amount of kibbels released - Measure the time it takes to eat the food by measuring the time it takes for the weight of the food in the bowl to become 0g. - Be able to input the cat’s gender, weight, breed, age into the app to determine the amount and speed of kibbles - If there are multiple cats, detect which cat is at the feeder |
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