Dogs are my favorite things in the world. And my dog happens to be the number one dog in the world.
Because Bindis’s the number one dog in the world I like to give her lots of scratches and sometimes even treats, If I could I would give her scratches and treats 24/7, But theres a couple problems with that, number one being crippling obesity, and number 2 in order to never run out of treats I need to buy them with money, in order to get money I need to go to work. While I’m at work, I’m not at home and my number one dog isn’t getting scratched or getting a treat, and that’s a problem frankly I needed fix as soon as possible.

Please Watch Video Before Reading. It will be much more explanatory than the instructable.

Supplies

Parts used for this project:

Esp32 cam: https://amzn.to/3qOziLi

Servo motor: https://amzn.to/3bNwYjl

3D printer: https://amzn.to/3bNwYjl

Piezo buzzer: https://amzn.to/3bNwYjl

Arduino: https://amzn.to/3bNwYjl

A much easier way to get this to work would have been to use a simple raspberry pi kit

Screen: https://ban.ggood.vip/XsqQ

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B: https://ban.ggood.vip/XsqQ

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Step 1: Build Dispenser and Scratching Arm

To solve this dog scratching injustice I realized I was going to have to get creative. I set up a WebCam using an ESP 32 camera and I eventually got it working on my phone using the Blynk app.

To drop a treat I design to 3-D print a mechanism to drop one treat at a time. It’s driven by 9 g mini servo and actually works a lot better than I expected it to.

To scratch my dog I used a heavy duty servo and a carbon fiber pipe in order to get a scratching motion. This actually ended up scaring my dog and I later removed it.

There is also the problem that my dog did not like the robot at all. To solve this I put a piezo buzzer and wired that to the ESP 32. I then began to train my dog by giving her a treat anytime I sounded the buzzer. Now she associates the beep with getting a tree so when I buzz the beeper my dog comes running over.

dropper v1.stl
Download View in 3D

Step 2: Hide Electronics in Enclosure

I was going to 3-D print a fancy looking enclosure for this project. But I realize I hadn’t uploaded a video in so long that I decided to rush it and use an old cardboard box. It actually ended up working better than I thought and I put a couple weights at the bottom to hold it down.

I 100% admit how janky the setup is and accept it.

Step 3: Things Go Wrong

Everything was working great and I can give my dog a treat while I wasn’t home and it was really cool. Unfortunately things came to an abrupt halt when I noticed that my cat was stealing treats on the WebCam.
Cats are the worst and I was not OK with this.
I couldn’t find a solution to scare my cat away so I decided to trash the entire robot.

Step 4: Reflecting

As fun as it was to give my dog a treat while I wasn’t home the problems that this robot brought we’re not worth the satisfaction.

I decided to trash the robot once and for all and settle on giving my dog a treat the old-fashioned way, in person.