Sealed Feeder

[daftcat75]

I want a wet feeder that seals between meals so she doesn't have to smell food that she can't get to in the time between feedings. SurePet has a quality seal. The other timed feeders I'm looking at don't seem to have given this much thought. They all look like poorly constructed plastic numbers that a persistent kitty could pry open.

I am looking at a couple of solutions here. But I also can probably dig up the hardware geeks to help me where I don't have the expertise myself. If I implement one of these, I'll definitely report back here.

1. Buy the timer control door and the motion control feeder (I don't need the microchip one with only one cat but the concept is the same.) Find some local hardware geeks (either at work or we have a place called TechShop which is a subscription-based electronics hobby shop/laboratory that people can come and work on projects like these) and see if I can hire someone to take the timer circuit out of the door and connect it to the motion circuit on the feeder. This is obviously the most difficult of solutions and it may not even be possible. I may end up with a circuit that works but no way to program it.

2. Find a suitable C-battery to AC adapter solution that would allow me to put the feeder on AC power (wall outlet.) Once it's on AC, I can plug it into a programmable plug like TP-Link Kasa that I can set a schedule. If the feeder isn't powered, it won't open. I think I'd maybe need a second plug or a simple alarm clock to play a sound to let Krista know that the feeder is now in business. Another option I do today with her is programmable smart lights that fade in on a schedule like an artificial sunrise. I have no other way that I can think of to teach her time except, "is the sun up? no, we're not feeding yet." I could reduce this to a smaller lamp near her food that doesn't wake me but would show her, "the restaurant is now open."

 

[daftcat75]

Bingo!

I found this, a 4 C-cell battery eliminator that will convert one of their battery-powered feeders to AC power:
https://www.batteryeliminatorstore.com/index.php?id_product=26&controller=product

Plug that AC power to this:

Now you can use your smartphone to set the power schedule. The feeder won't open if it is not powered.

I will order those two plus the motion feeder since I don't need the microchip. Perhaps late next week I'll have all the bits arrived and assembled and ready to report back.

 

[daftcat75]

By the way, their newest feeder, the Connect, which is not yet available for sale will have a scale built in and will let you monitor by smartphone how much they eat and when. If that’s most important to you, maybe it’s worth it to wait for that one. And maybe that one might even come with an AC power supply if it has all those connected features. Though I doubt it. They sell a cute cat eared hub for their other connect products. Probably to offload the more power intensive features to something that’s wall plugged. I got a reply back from them about the newest feeder connect and it won’t have timer control either. I let them know my planned (and unsupported) battery to ac solution and how I would appreciate future feeders to have an ac option if they aren’t going to include timer control. I’ll let you know if he writes me back about that.