Description: Field of Invention
Advent of emerging technologies enables smart services to the citizen and improves their living standards by making their homes smart and inevitable. Internet of Things (IOT) is the technology that enables the interaction between human and machine, Machine and machine. The IOT is capable of connecting all kind of devices and services of home together over Internet. In this invention, IOT technology has been implemented to develop an Intelligent PET Feeder (IPF) system that automates feeding services required for pets at home. The IPF system can provide the pet feeding services such as supply food and water as per PET requirements. This IPF system also assists the human to serve the PET at home when they are moving away from home especially for many days.

The objectives of this invention
The objective of this invention is to design Intelligent PET Feeder using IOT technology that enables the automatic PET feeding services such as providing food and water as per pet requirement. The Intelligent PET Feeder (IPF) system can connect the facilities and feeding services with PET over IOT network.
Background of the invention
Nowadays Pet’s are becoming one among the family in many houses. So, pet’s care services also important in the houses where owner or servants can provide required services to the pets. Regular feeding of the PETs is most important service that requires dedicated human resource. Owners frequently forget to feed the pets due to their work schedule and other personal commitments. There are semi-automatic pet feeders have been developed and available in the market. These semi-automatic pet feeders require human efforts to set the feeding requirements. In this invention, the pet feeder is made smart by incorporating Internet of Things (IOT) Concepts. The IOT technology enables the pet feeder to interact with other device and become smart enough to provide best pet feeding services without human intervention. Every pet in a home is assigned with RFID to detect and authenticate the pets to avail feeding services. An android app has been developed to support the user to make changes in the settings remotely and also monitor the status of the food feed stock. The IOT technology use MQTT protocol to make all possible communications between the pets, pet feeder and remote user.

The intelligent pet feeder will help the pet owners who have busy work schedule and often leave the home and monitor the pet’s diets through smart phone remotely. The intelligent pet feeder automatically dispenses required food and also water to the pet at regular intervals. This intelligent pet feeder can address the following major two problems faced by pet owners.

1. Making sure that every pet would have access to required amount of food regardless of the owner’s schedule.
2. Making sure every each pet eats only its own food set by owner and also drink enough water throughout the day.

The intelligent pet feeder is designed to function as automatic and also allow the user to feed their pets remotely through internet. The intelligent pet feeder has sensors to automate the food feeding process with less human interference.

Description of Prior Art
An invention Automatic pet feeder having rotating food hopper and food leaking plate [US9560834B2] is a programmable automatic pet feeder that can provide quantitative food for pets regularly according to a program set by the humans. This invention includes a food hopper and a feeding tray that avoid problem of food stuck while dispense. Invention Automatic pet food feeder [US6401657B1] is a motorized pet feeder that have food storage bin with top and bottom open. The bottom open of the bin is used for feed drop into a feeding bowl housed and which is controlled based on feed requirements. A motor is mounted to the housing through rotatable shaft that control the feed drop from feed bin into feeding bowl. The pet food feeder is equipped timer and sensing devices to control the actuation of motor in order to control the food transported to the bowl. An Invention called automatic pet feeder [US7650855B2] discloses a pet feeding mechanism to provide predetermined quantity of food at predefined time intervals. This invention comprises of a base, a feeding bowl with pie shaped divisions, a timer module and locking mechanism to hold the entire unit in place. The timer is used to program the feeding schedules using IR remote or USB port interface to a port. An invention called form system [US20170303505A1] comprising of smart tags configured to worn by animals for their identity, wireless transmitter and receiver communication network that establishes communication with smart tags and control unit that control the form unit. The control unit receives the information from the animals through wireless communication network, analyze the required services and then provide the services.
An invention called automatic feeder with feeding pipe [EP3269233B1] equipped with feeding pipe to solve the technical issues of conventional feeder. An invention called networked automatic animal feeding system [US10743517B2] includes microcontroller based receptacle communicated with wireless sensor network. The receptacle holds pet food consumables and the food dispenses into chute through an opening channel of receptacle. It also equipped with sensors to monitor the level of consumables, food dispense and notify when consumables below the threshold levels. The microcontroller initiates communication with a remote vendor to refill consumables when the consumable level falls below the threshold level. An invention called combined pet food and water dispenser [US8245665B2] is an automatic food and water dispenser for pets and it comprises of dual channel and dual chamber bin, a food bowl and a control unit. Food is stored in the first chamber and water is stored in second chamber of the dual chambered container.
Summary of the invention
Most of the people in the world intentionally have pets as their companions but at times these pets are becoming burden to them. The invention Intelligent Pet Feeder (IPF) system provides solution to the pet owner to provide feeding services automatically and reduces the burden of maintaining pets. The IPF system provides a solution to the problems of existing pet feeding system by automating feeding services using Internet of Things (IOT) technology. The Intelligent Pet feeder uses microcontroller enable with wireless communication port to connect with Internet, wireless sensors to identify pets, servo motor to control feed flow through tunnel, Water pump to control water flow and relays to control power supply to the hardware parts. The microcontroller is embedded with application software that acts as brain to monitor and control the pet feed services.
Detailed description of the invention
The Intelligent Pet Feeder has been designed to support pets at home, dairy farms and poultry farms. It is most important to maintain the diet of pets or animals just like humans to keep them healthy for better living and to produce optimum yield in case of dairy farm and poultry farm. The Intelligent Pet Feeding System consists of IOT enabled Microcontroller (NodeMCU or Raspberry Pi), Feed Mechanism having wireless sensors to identify pets, servo motor to control feed flow through tunnel, Water pump to control water flow, relays to control power supply to the hardware parts such as Motors, Food storage Bin, Feeding bowl and Camera to monitor the feeding mechanism. The intelligent Pet Feeder is connected with smart phone through internet and it enable user interface.
The Intelligent Pet Feeder dispenses food and water to the pets in 3 stages Pet feeder, Central Database server, IOT Network and Mobile application.
Sage 1 - Pet Feeder having microcontroller interfaced with feeding mechanism and camera to monitor and controls feeding services. Wherein the microcontroller acts as server connected with cloud database and control feeding mechanism.
Stage 2 – Central Database server and IOT network that has active internet connection enabled through WiFi router to provide remote access to the user. The IOT network connects Central Database server with pet feeder hardware and smart phone to provide conversation between pet feeder and remote user. The IOT network uses MQTT protocol to establish communication between devices.
Stage 3 – Android Mobile Application developed to control the pet feeder mechanism remotely over internet. The user can configure the feeding services using android application. In the current invention an open source android application named Blynk App is customized to create user interface. The android application also used to monitor the processes, update food stock and register or unregister devices or pets.
The intelligent Pet Feeder system connects android application with server and Pet Feeder through IOT network and establishes communication between them using MQTT protocol.

RFID Tag: Sensor attached to the pets and it acts as their identity to get the suitable food and water at regular intervals.
Ultrasonic Sensor: Sensor attached to food dispenser to identify the feed bowl and dispense required amount of feed to the pets.
Web Camera: Camera acts as monitoring devices that visualize the pet living environment to the remote user over android mobile application.
DC Motor: Actuator attached to propeller blade mechanism at food storage bin valve to control the flow of food dispense into feeding bowl.
Water Pump: Actuator dropped in water tank to pump the water into water feed bowl as per the pet requirements.
Relay: Actuator that acts as electromechanical switch to supply power to the hardware parts such as microcontroller, motors, water pump, and camera.
Central database server: Central database and server is cloud space that holds the huge data generated by various sensors in the network and make the data available to the intelligent pet feeder system for its data analysis.
IOT Network: Connects Central Database server with pet feeder hardware and smart phone and establishes communication between pet feeder and remote user. The IOT network uses MQTT protocol to establish conversation between the devices.
IOT Enabled Microcontroller: Acts as Intelligent control system interfaced with central database server and feeding mechanism. The Intelligent system analyzes data received from the sensors and android mobile application and then provides instructions to the actuator to provide required services to the pets.
Fan/Air conditioner: Actuator that can be controlled by microcontroller to maintain the required humidity and moisture level for pets living.
LED Light: Actuator that can be controlled by microcontroller and maintain enough light intensity for pets living in indoors.

The Intelligent Pet Feeder system has been constructed in the area of 250 square feet and evaluated for its effectiveness with 4 pets in an indoor environment.

4 Claims & 4 Figures
Brief description of Drawing
In the figures which are illustrate exemplary embodiments of the invention.
Figure 1 Block diagram of Pet Feeder – Describes the interfacing of sensor and actuators to control the pet feeding services.
Figure 2 Central Database & IOT Network Architecture – Describes the IOT network architecture that interconnects central database server and pet feeder through WiFi router.
Figure 3 CAD model of Food & Water Feeding Bowl
Figure 4 CAD Design of pet living environmental setup– Demonstrates the installed setup for pet living and pet feeding mechanism in an indoor.
Detailed description of the drawing
As discussed above the present invention relates to design of Intelligent Pet Feeder for maintaining pet feeding services in an indoor environment.
Block diagram of pet feeder is shown in figure 1. The Pet Feeder has microcontroller as main building block and it is interconnected with sensors and actuators to control the feeding services. The pet feeder also connected with central database server over internet to receive instructions from user remotely over internet. The pet feeder accepts data from sensors and central database and then generates decisions for actuators to maintain feeding services as per pet requirements.
Central database server and IOT Network Architecture for Intelligent Pet Feeder are shown in figure 2. The IOT network architecture connects Central Database server with pet feeder hardware and smart phone and establishes communication between pet feeder and remote user. The IOT network uses MQTT protocol to establish conversation between the devices. The pet feeder can collect the pet requirements and stores in Central database server. The data in central database server can be understood by user remotely and configure pet feeding services using android mobile application. The pet feeding services set by user are communicated to pet feeder through central database and the pet feeder system implement the services using food feeding mechanism.
The computer aided model of Intelligent Pet Feeder system implemented in an indoor environmental is shown in figure 3 and Figure 4. The figure demonstrates the pet living environment, pet feeding system implemented to set of 2 pets. The setup could have water tank for continuous water supply when required, Camera to monitor pet movements, various sensors and actuators to make pet living environment healthy. , Claims: The scope of the invention is defined by the following claims:

Claim:
1. A intelligent per feeder system comprising:
a) A Pet Feeder integrated with Central Database Server and smart phone over IOT network to create healthy indoor pet living environment.
b) A pet feeding mechanism equipped with IOT enabled microcontroller and the microcontroller acts as intelligent processing core to control pet feeding services.
c) A microcontroller in Pet Feeder is integrated with sensors and actuators as shown in Pet Feeder Block diagram to control the pet feeding services such as feeding food and water as per pet requirements.
2. As mentioned in claim 1, wherein sensors and actuator are integrated with microcontroller to perform dedicated functionality.
3. According to claim 1, Central Database server is connected with Pet Feeder and Smart phone over IOT network for information exchange using MQTT Protocol.

4. As per claim 1, wherein Smart phone is connected with Central Database Server through an android mobile application and the android mobile application acts as user interface to configure Pet feeding services through Central Database Server.