We’ll admit it: we sometimes overcomplicate things. Look at [Peter Weissbrod’s] automated cat feeder, for example. It isn’t anything more than a bottle, a servo, some odds and ends, and an Arduino. However, it lets him sleep in without his cat waking him for service.

We looked at the code and thought, “This thing will just dispense food all the time! That’s not what you want!” Then we looked closer. [Peter] uses a common household timer to just turn the device on in the morning, let it run for a bit, and then turns it off. You can see a video of the mechanism, below.

Honestly, we have mixed feelings. As we are sure someone’s already quit reading to comment: you don’t really need an Arduino for this. If it were doing the timing, that might make it more justifiable. Or perhaps have it sense daylight to feed in the morning. Still, Arduinos are cheap (we just picked up some tiny Pro’s for about $3) and it is a more flexible arrangement than, say, a 555 driving the servo.

We have seen many cat feeders over the years. Some of them use custom components. Others use whatever you have on hand (including another kitchen timer). However you do it, one thing is clear: When the aliens come and observe life on Earth, they will doubtless conclude that the cats are in charge.

In my previous post, I showed how to control a few LEDs using an Arduino board and BitVoicer Server. In this post, I am going to make things a little more complicated.

read more

In this post I am going to show how to use an Arduino board and BitVoicer Server to control a few LEDs with voice commands. I will be using the Arduino Micro in this post, but you can use any Arduino board you have at hand.

The following procedures will be executed to transform voice commands into LED activity:

read more

If you’re looking to build the next creepy Halloween decoration or simply thinking about trying out OpenCV for the first time, this next project will have you covered. [Glen] made a pair of giant googly eyes that follow you around the room using some servos and some very powerful software.

The project was documented in three parts. In Part 1, [Glen] models and builds the eyes themselves, including installing the servo motors that will eventually move them around. The second part involves an Arduino and power supply that will control the servos, and the third part goes over using OpenCV to track faces.

This part of the project is arguably the most interesting if you’re new to OpenCV; [Glen] uses this software package to recognize different faces. From there, the computer picks out the most prominent face and sends commands to the Arduino to move the eyes to the appropriate position. The project goes into great detail, from Arduino code to installing Ubuntu to running OpenCV for the first time!

We’ve featured some of [Glen]’s projects before, like his FPGA-driven LED wall, and it’s good to see he’s still making great things!