If you live near a stream or river you could easily rig a water wheel to dispense cat food at whatever rate you want with the right gear combos and some scoop buckets with flaps
this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2024
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This sounds like the most complicated over-engineered option I've ever heard of.
"Guys, is there a cat treat dispenser?"
"So what you do is first, live by the river, and THEN connect a waterwheel, to run as power and connect that to the cat feeder, to dispense at so many wheel turns from the water"
"Or, ya know.....maybe something battery operated, or plugs into a wall outlet."
But first, we need to talk about parallel universes.
Cats dig waterwheels though, everybody knows that.
You forgot the part of building a metal trebuchet
"go build a water wheel" they said, "it'll be easy" they said...
ok, so to calculate the first gear, we're going to go with (2πr cos AB x tan Φ) / v / 24hrs, where v = the average speed of the water in the river measured at least 30 times at random over a period of a year. The first to second gear is a ratio of 5:2.667. The second to third gear ratio is 4.20:6.9 (niceee). This will be the prototype.
this sounds like a fun arduino project
edit: a quick google search found this!
more sophisticated 3d-printed dispenser, along with Raspberry Pi source code (python):
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/22/local-iot-cat-treat-dispenser/
another for arduino:
https://www.instructables.com/Arduino-Project-Cat-Food-Dispenser/
there are lots more...
I'm so curious about why you need this.
I'm afraid it's nothing fun.
I had two cats, one young, one old.
My old 17 year old cat passed recently, and my 3 year old cat has been super erratic for months since. I've tried tons of things from calm down treats, pheromones, different toys... he's just a very unhappy young cat. He runs around just meowing a ton at random times, which he never did before. There is my room mates cat so there is another cat, but my cat has 0 interest in this other cat. He's unhappy.
I'm hoping maybe I can hide this in different places each day and he'll have something to hunt when it makes a noise and give him a sense of schedule and things to do?
I've tried most of the advice I can find online, so now I'm trying to make things up. I didn't give very many details because I knew if I did, I'd just get a whole ton of advice that I already tried.
We've got one that you can schedule meals through an app. Most of the smart auto feeders offer that kind of capability. Ours is set to drop a pre selected amount at 0530, 1200, and 1700.
I have this one:
…it has no slots, just a single big hopper. You can program it to feed any amount at any interval, and holds a huge amount of food. You can also control it remotely via any internet connection.
Is there one you can dispense via Wi-Fi?
Two six slots feels like the best answer unless you can score a programmable auto-feeder and your treats are dry food.
It may feel absurd but your scenario is quite out there so there aren't great solutions readily available.