Automatic Pet Feeder with LABview

christinescoms said:

Hi all,

I'm trying to use LABview to feed and provide water for my pet while I'm away from home. I want to perform this task at the same time each day and refill food/water to a starting setpoint (this way the autofeeder dispenses little when little is eaten and a lot when a lot is eaten).

I'm less worried about the software part of LABview, and am having trouble doing this. I don't know what general hardware I should start with.

I figure I'll use a control valve for the water from my sink, but am confused on even how to wire it to my computer to perform this task. If anyone has any suggestions or solutions,

I would greater appreciate it check rockatship.com.

Click to expand...

thanks in advance for any help

What kind of port on your computer do you want to use ? (Serial. parallel, USB or network.) You may be able to us a a smart plug to control it via the network. ( The same way you use the computer switch on a light.) Alow voltahe power supply would plug into the smart plug and supply a solenoid valve. (For safety reasons I would not use a mains voltage solenoid valve. Dispencing the food would be more of a problem. I use an auger type feeder to to dispence solid food to a hedgehog that visits our garden. You would also need some form of sensor for the to sence the level of food or water. That would require information the be fed into your computer for the water and food level.

Les.

Some thoughts :

1) I would tackle this with a ESP8266 or ESP32, logging into your
network. It would use net just for time, and act as a standalone
solution for rest of design. With coding even report state of water
and food levels and activity.....and report with message to phone
system status.....

2) Use Tuniot to access network time and to do the control work. Tuniot
is block language programming, easy to learn. And it has examples
reporting to phone using web services :



Whats required in Tuniot to gain access to network time :


Example server in Tuniot :



3) I would add a HC04 distance sensor to measure water level height,
and control appropriately. Just use Tuniot code to measure its PW output.


4) For food the auger mentioned by Les Jones good Idea. Use a load cell
to measure or another HC04 to measure pile height.... Incorporate jam sensing,
maybe motor stall current, or pile height not changing while in add food control
loop....

5) For interface SSR, easy, provides isolation, can get them to control AC or DC loads. :



Its possible to consider this using battery backup in case of power loss. Although
Auger probably takes a lot of battery. Could just do it for water. Loss of power also
means loss of internet time, but coding could manage this. And / or add a RTC
module as a backup for time of day. Just a thought....

For inductive loads use snubbers, clamp diodes to protect SSRs. Snubbers for AC type
loads, diodes for DC like :



Some SSRs have this protection, consult data sheets.

Here is a control example, in this case a servo was used, to do a design. Just general
principals and shows some coding :



Regards, Dana.

I think at first you can try without Labview using ESP8266 or ESP32.
Later you can switch to Labview considering the safety and feasibility.