Make your pet dishes tweet!

You give your pets everything: Food, water, a home, toys, and love. Why not give them a twitter account?

This project allows you to monitor your pets' eating habits and receive alerts when their supplies are low. It's also a cute, fun way to learn how to interact with the Arduino, Twitter, sensors, and Ethernet.

Let's get started!

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Step 1: The Parts

Here is the part list I used to make it work. Depending on your individual needs, you may substitute the scale, amplifier, or water sensor.

An Arduino Uno (available at Adafruit here )
An Arduino Ethernet Shield (Also at Adafruit here )
A cheap digital kitchen or postal scale ($20 at Bed Bath and Beyond) for the strain gauge.
An instrumentation amplifier to boost the strain gauge output. I used a $3 INA126PA from Jameco.
A water level sensor. For ease of use, I chose the this one from Jameco.
A prototyping board, prototyping shield, or ability to create circuit boards.
A 5V USB power supply and USB A-B cable.
Something to protect your kit from the pets. I used a cheap plastic storage bin.
A couple resistors, some spare parts from around the house, and some creativity.

There are alternatives to using the Ethernet shield posted by other entries to the Make it Tweet challenge. Check those out and see which method you like more. If you like their projects, vote for them!