are you having a lovely pet in your home?   
         or do you intend to have a pet in the future?   
               do you sincerely love your pet and wish him a happy life?
                       and sometimes get bored of the daily feeding touting?   

then you will find some use in our project---the new era of pet care

introduction video

• intelligence

  By recording the time and volume the owner feed the pet, the feeder learns the habit,and works according to it. Via measuring the volume the pet eats per time,the system informs the user if he/she should provide more/less food each meal.

• Health

  The system detects the volume of left food,and informs the user if she/he need to provide more or less food for the sake of the pet's health.If the food remains the same for a certain time,the system informs the user it's possible that the pet is ill.

• Convenience

  There are three modes working for different situations. The huge container contains enough food for days consumption. The owner can also control the pet feeder by means of internet(Gmail is our current idea),remotely access and communicate with the system.

modes

• memory mode

  the pet feeder records the daily feeding behavior(both timing and volume) for certain days,and will repeat it

• slave mode

  nothing to be discussed here,when you push the button or send a email(eg. feed_50g),the feeder works
  this mode is in case of sudden situation,you can manually control the feeder's behavior without affecting the memory

• self-study mode

  the system records your one day feeding behavior,repeat and adjusts the value(or maybe timing as well?) according to the pet's behavior
  this mode can also be transferred from the memory mode,in this case,the memory values can directly be taken as initial values

hardware:

• A container for storing the food.

  large enough for days' food supply

• A bowl for feeding.

  weighting sensor is attached on the bottom of the bowl,
  our system can easily handle every situation

• A control circuit

  accessing via Ethernet,you can communicate remotely with the system

• A valve between the bowl and the container

  driven by a stepper motor,the valve dispenses food from the container to the bowl and some other electronic components

functional requirements

• automatic feed according to user's habit
• can also be used as a normal feeder
  
• can be remotely controlled via e-mail
  
• can self-study the pet's behavior and determine a suitable amount feeding volume
  
• inform user if the food in the bowl is left or consumed up and wait for a command
  to provide less food in the future or add more food to satisfy the pet's need
  
• inform user when the food stops decreasing(pet finishes eating) and inform user
  to walk the pet
  
• if the food in the bowl remains the same for a certain time after the supposed
  feeding time,the system informs user the pet is possibly ill
  

non-functional requirements

• solid enough to prevent from the possible damage caused by the pet
• logic part should be water proof or be away from ground in case of pet peeing on it
• if internet connection failed,the system should work according to its own memory
  (the feeding routine) instead of stopping working
  
• the container can be replaced and can be easily washed
  

Network Architecture

*this part is a little complicated.We have three requirements ,one of the most important is to lewan the feeding the behavior of the master in the first week. According to this requirement , the software portion has to be aware of the time . (to be continued)

Software Architecture