Alexa: The Dog Feeder

Ever need to feed your dog but you're not home? With the help of Alexa and the Internet of Things you can now feed your dog from anywhere!

BeginnerFull instructions provided2 hours2,081

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Amazon Alexa Echo Dot

Particle Photon

Servos (Tower Pro MG996R)

Jumper wires (generic)

Dry Food Dispenser

wood screws

wood

OpenBuilds Cable Ties (10 Pack)

eye bolts

Software apps and online services

IFTTT Amazon Alexa service

Google Sheets

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Drill

Story

I think we all can relate that life gets hectic. As a college student or someone working full time, there may be days when the dog has to wait a few extra hours before you're home to feed it. With the help of Alexa and the Internet of Things it is now possible to feed your dog from anywhere!

Dog Feeder in Action

Here is our overall set up. The wood structure's purpose is to secure the servo motor and the dry food dispenser. This can be done any way you'd like but we found this to be the simplest.

Overall Set Up

Photon connection to servo

This project is powered by a photon (IoT device) and Alexa. With that being said, if you have internet you can use the amazon app to talk to Alexa. You can simply ask Alexa to feed the dog any time anywhere.

Dry food dispenser secured with screws, zip ties, and wood

Once Alexa is triggered the servo rotates the dry food dispenser. The dog food is delivered and the dog is fed! The secondary photon is notified through the particle publish and particle subscribe function (this can be found in the code subsection). The secondary photon is responsible for two things: sending the dog owner a text of when the dog was fed and adding the date and time to a chart on google sheets. Each time the date and time is sent to google sheets a "1" appears beside the date indicating that the dog was fed at that time. This produces a graph to help keep track of the average times the dog is fed.

Communication photon (secondary photon)

Below are the IFTTT Alexa skills used for the secondary photon.

IFTTT commands used for the secondary photon (Frozen_Tundra)

Here is an example of the notification received.

Text message from secondary photon using IFTTT

Google sheet graph of dog feeding times

Code

Servo myservo;

int servoPin = A5; 



void setup()
{

  myservo.attach(servoPin);  
  
  Particle.function("feed",triggerFeed);
}



int triggerFeed(String command)
{


 if (command=="feed")
    {
     
        myservo.attach(servoPin);
        myservo.write(0);
        delay(2000);
        myservo.write(360);
        delay(2000);
        myservo.write(0);
        myservo.detach();
        delay(2000);
        myservo.attach(servoPin);
        myservo.write(0);
        delay(2000);
        myservo.write(360);
        delay(2000);
        myservo.write(0);
        myservo.detach();
      Particle.publish("doggy_time", "time");
 
 
    }

}

// We start with the setup function.

void setup() {

  Particle.subscribe("doggy_time", text);
}
void text(const char *event, const char *data)
{
 

  if (strcmp(data,"time")==0) { 
      Particle.publish("doggy_text","time2"); 
      Particle.publish("doggy_graph","1");
      
      
  }
  }