Cat water dish auto filler
This has been an idea I have had for a few years. I finally decided to pull the parts together to do it.
I have a nice water dish with a fountain for my cats. The only problem is when the water is drank or evaporates the pump will start to suck air. Every three days or so, you have to fill it. Got tired of dong that and when I leave for extended time, I need someone to come and check on the cats.
This has to be the simplest Spin program ever. It just watches the float switch and when it comes on, it runs the solenoid for 3 seconds. SO far it works fine. In the future I may want to have a display to show how many times it has come on the the last X amount of time so I can trend the water usage to see if there is a spike. That sometimes can be an indicator of a health problem in the cat.
Here is a link to a video showing it....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z71kQMxaWgM
If anyone is interested, I can cut more parts for the mount. It uses a Prop Proto boad, 12V solenoid, and float switch. I think I have maybe $50 in parts.
I have a nice water dish with a fountain for my cats. The only problem is when the water is drank or evaporates the pump will start to suck air. Every three days or so, you have to fill it. Got tired of dong that and when I leave for extended time, I need someone to come and check on the cats.
This has to be the simplest Spin program ever. It just watches the float switch and when it comes on, it runs the solenoid for 3 seconds. SO far it works fine. In the future I may want to have a display to show how many times it has come on the the last X amount of time so I can trend the water usage to see if there is a spike. That sometimes can be an indicator of a health problem in the cat.
Here is a link to a video showing it....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z71kQMxaWgM
If anyone is interested, I can cut more parts for the mount. It uses a Prop Proto boad, 12V solenoid, and float switch. I think I have maybe $50 in parts.
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Comments
That's pretty cool! Could you do an Instructable on this?
OBC
I've thought about it. It's a pretty common water dish, so I guess there would be a lot of people that have them. All the parts are pretty available, as there is nothing custom except the laser cut mount. The float switch and solenoid were sourced from eBay, and the rest of the parts are pretty basic.
I seem to remember somebody doing something similar:
http://www.parallax.com/tabid/888/Default.aspx
Yeah, I got some of my inspiration from him. Met him at the UPEC the last two years.
So far it's been running for about 4 days and have not had to refill the bowl yet. My guess is it will also help the water pump last longer as it will no longer be sucking air half of the time waiting for me to fill it.
Cats seem to like it too. Watched one of them drinking from it the other day and it filled while he was drinking and did not scare him at all. It makes very little noise. I have the water at the tap valve turned way down as you don't need much flow.
Now on to make the feeder dish. I bought a nice gear head motor (http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/1447) with an encoder to drive the screw drive auger that will dispense the food. With the encoder, I should be able to know exactly the amount of food that has been sent out the shoot. I was just going to drive it for a specific about of time, but this will be better.