We’ve seen a great many cat feeders over the years. Some rely on the Internet of Things, and some rely on fancy microcontrollers. [Larry Cook], on the other hand, built his using a simple 4060 binary counter chip.
The feeder is built out of old plywood, and the whole thing runs off an old 12-volt DC wall wart and a lead-acid battery to keep it going in a power outage. The dry cat food is stored in hopper above a drum, with the drum rotated by a 12-volt DC gearmotor. The gearmotor is activated on a schedule—either every 4 hours, or every 5.5 hours, depending on setting. There’s then a four-digit 7-segment display for counting the total number of feedings.
The manner of operation is simple. The 4060 binary counter slowly counts up to 8,196 on a 1.11 Hz or 0.83 Hz clock, for four hour or 5.5 hour operation respectively. When it hits that threshold, it fires the …