This project aims to take care of your pet's health when you are not around, PHK feeds your pet according to the time set to the timer and monitor how it is getting fed, including how much water and feed it is taking. Leveraging the power of IP Camera and IR distance sensor and speaker, Interacting with your pet remotely is not so hard anymore; you can even award your pet with snack any time you like. Moreover, the moisture, temperature sensors are used to assist in monitoring the freshness of the food and the environment they are living.

Step 1: Step 1: How It Works

PHK is built based on Intel Edison Board and various sensors, it collects data from sensors and provides useful monitor information to users via APP or browser interface, the user can even control or interact with PHK directly via APP.

Use Case:

Set timer of the PHK to specify the time of feed drop with APP
Interact with your pet in real time with the streaming Video and speaker and drop the feed instantly as reward

Water sensor to monitor the water level of water can
Temperature sensor to monitor the temperature of the environment
Moisture sensor to monitor the moisture of the feed
IR Distance Sensor to detect if the pet approach the PHK and how long does it stay
LCD could notify the user important information with different backlight color
USB UVC captures the video of the pet
Speaker to call out or to speak to the pets
Motor and a feed drop mechanism to control the drop of feed

Step 2: Step 2: What You Need

1x Intel Edison Board

1x Plastic bottle

1x Water Sensor

1x Temperature Sensor

1x Moisture Sensor

1x IR Distance Sensor

1x LCD (RGB Backlight)

1x USB UVC Camera

1x Motor

1x Cloud server

Step 3: Step 3: Setup the Environment

At first, you need to set up Edison board as instructed in the official documents. In this project, we develop mainly in the Linux environment when Eclipse IDE is selected as our main development tool. C and Python are used in most of our program.

Step 4: Step 4: Cloud Service Setup

We develop our cloud service with PHP and MySQL, and run the services on private server or on Amazon Cloud.

Step 5: Step 5: Setup Sensors

1. Getready all the sensors and the relevant sample codes to accelerate the process

2. Cut a bottle in to half, one half as feed can and another as water can.

3. Prepare a carton and use it as the main structure of PHK, cut some holes on it for feed drop and tape sensor and camera on.

4. Put all the sensors to where it should be on the carton (ex. Water sensor goes to the water can)

5. Write codes to control the motor to spin the feed can so that the feed will drop all the way through the hole on carton to the plat at the bottom. Take some time to modify the spinning angle of the motor so that the feed drops accurately.

Step 6: Step 6: Smartphone APP

We develop an Android App to receive the monitoring information and streaming video from PHK so that the user could get the latest status/video of their pets. Moreover, the related monitoring information will be integrated into the APP for further analysis. The App is developed as native Android APP with Eclipse IDE, and the protocol used to communicate with PHK is HTTP.