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This is the best up-armoured cat feeder I've seen this week. Kudos to Quinn for never giving up. I'm terrified to think what the next step will be once Sprocket chooses to escalate.
Kudos to the cat for never giving up. My cat is clever and stubborn but this cat is downright devious.
HN is supposed to be a place for smart people.
anyone with more money than time and metal working skills might consider just getting a super feeder: http://www.super-feeder.com (nothing but a satisfied customer, here.)
The new PetSafe feeder is better: it will produce a little food when kicked, but it will only drop out a bit of the next meal from the top of the ramp; in contrast, the super feeder could drain its entire reservoir through continual knocking. I also find the PetSafe a better machine in other regards (battery operated, much larger reservoir, easier to program a serving by volume).
I do think the super feeder is more hackable though, so if you're looking to do metalwork maybe it's the better fit.
Simpler solution? Place cat feeder on top of refrigerator, long tube to direct falling food down to bowl on floor.
Additionally, putting any expensive gadget up high above a hard surface is a recipe for disaster.
do not feed cats from a machine. Even if you are super busy, give her food in the morning and after you get home from work, that's more than enough. Perhaps at the same time as your breakfast and your dinner. Despite the common perception of cats as 'loners' , they still want to be part of your 'gang' not a lonely creature feeding from a machine. Ideally you would want to play with the cat before feeding her so she a…
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Some pets might eat themselves to obesity given the chance. I'm not sure the amount of effort the cat puts into trying to get more food is a perfect determinate of how much food the cat needs to be healthy.
Yeah, you need to raise the cat from first weaning with unlimited access to food to prevent this. If they never experience a moment of food anxiety in their lives, most cats will only eat when they are actually hungry. The majority of cats, however, have a built-in desire to eat whenever food is available, because they have not learned that it will continue to be available in the future. It's really hard to teach the…
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Has he tried a increase in the cat's food intake? Seems low cost, low risk, and if it does not work you can resume armor plating the robot.
All of the attack vectors of that specific cat feeder have been addressed by mine. I applaud the ingenuity, but fear she spent far more time and money "fixing" this one instead of doing a little amazon shopping. I also hope that she unbolts that bowl to clean it every week.
This seems like a classic case of over-engineering the wrong problem. The problem isn't that the cat is getting into the machine, the problem is that the human is neglecting to feed the cat. Solve the right problem.
B) When traveling, one is not at home to feed the cat, at all. If fed, cats are quite content to have the house to themselves for a few days. If a cat is disciplined about eating, you can just put a lot of food in the bowl and leave it alone while you travel. If not, you need to build a machine to dispense food, or pay another human to come by and feed the cat.
C) I often enjoy reading stories about the process of engineering (iterated problems, solutions, new problems, etc.), even if the final result is 'over' engineered.