Indigo Domotics

Has anyone been successful implementing an Indigo compatible dog feeder?

Requirements would be for a large dog. Use my own bowl. Difficult for the dog to knock over. Remote feeding of a preset amount.

How big is the feed pellets/kibble? I'm thinking scavenge an auger drive from a pellet smoker and rig up a feed bin and tube to the bowl. Then turn the auger on for a specific time interval to dispense the feed. But smoker pellets are pretty small, not sure kibble would go through.

The auger for a pellet heating stove might be larger.

Her kibble is approximately ½ inch in diameter

Hmm. That might work. Next time you're at Home Depot or Ace or similar, look at the pellet smokers and look down through the pellet bin at the auger and see if you think the kibble will fit in that tube.

Or someplace that has pellet heaters. Maybe Tractor Supply?

I had a great one, but haven't been able to locate a replacement. Maybe you'll have better luck and post.

It was the Ergo Sys 2000GL and could hold 20 pounds of dog food. It came with standard three-prong plugged into a timer, which I removed, so that the feeder was "On" whenever connected to power. It was perfect for connecting to a smart plug (used Insteon at the time) to make a smart timer. Just adjust the duration of "On" time based on the size of your dog food. If changing dog food or chunk size of same food, I timed how long it took for the feeder to dispense the right amount, then set the smart plug to automatically run for that amount of time. (Usually programmed a couple extra "Off" commands since it was an Insteon that infrequently missed a command to prevent an accidental overfeeding).

Bought it from SmartHome. Here's the wayback link:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130525051 ... rge/p.aspx

That does look promising. Maybe I can find it used.

This is a project that is probably in my future… Are you open to a DIY solution or strictly off-the-shelf?

mundmc wrote:

This is a project that is probably in my future… Are you open to a DIY solution or strictly off-the-shelf?

It depends on the DIY. I'm fine with software DIY but once we get into soldering and cutting I'm generally useless.

How to Make a DIY Automatic Dog Feeder

this popped up in my news aggregator today : https://www.familyhandyman.com/project/ ... eeder-diy/