IoT-Based Cat Feeding and Monitoring System

Cats are one of the most common animals to keep. As pets, cats need regular meals, so cat owners will feel worried when they leave their cats for a long time. Cat owners will feel at ease if feeding and monitoring their cats can be done remotely. Currently, there is a technology that can communicate data remotely, namely the Internet of Things (IoT). This study applies the Internet of Things to a cat feeding and monitoring system. This tool can provide feed on schedule, measure the volume of feed in the feed tank, measure the remaining mass in the feed bowl, recognize which cats have eaten, and monitor the condition of the room. This tool utilizes the ESP32 as the microcontroller, various sensors to measure system conditions, a DC motor, and the Firebase Realtime Database as the system database. Sending and receiving data between the system and the database takes about 0.5 seconds. The system can dispense feed in predetermined portions with an accuracy of 96.94%. This system is also programmed so that when the feed volume in the tank is below 15%, the smartphone application will display a notification that the feed will run out. The system can also recognize a cat while it is eating using an RFID reader and tag with an accuracy of 95.83%. Meanwhile, the room monitoring function of the system utilizes the ESP32-Cam with the help of Ngrok so that it can be accessed outside the local network.