See the video above for a video demonstration and a basic wiring diagram.

The operation of the system is not particularly complicated. I built a housing and added electronics that “wrap” an existing wifi dog feeder. Each dog feeder can hold about a week’s worth of food and can be scheduled from an app. At the appropriate breakfast and dinner time it dispenses food into a hopper. This is where what I made starts.

An ESP8266 connected to wifi monitors the time and plays a beeping noise when there is a meal available (meals and other pertinent information are stored in EEPROM in case of power outages). There is a Wiegand RFID sensor on the front that reads small HID tags on the dogs’ collars. When the correct dog is present, and there is a meal available, the ESP8266 opens a blast gate, releasing the food from the hopper. There is also a small screen on each with a menu that displays the dog’s name, ID number, and lets you control a training mode - though my two dogs are food motivated enough that little training was actually required.