The Treat Cam: An Automatic Treat Dispensor that Snaps a Pic

The Treat cam is relatively easy to print and set up, it uses a button system and takes a quick photo of your best friend before rewarding them with their favorite treat. The duration between dispensing can be changed via Arduino code making it versatile for use as an auto feeder, or for training purposes. Below are the print settings and the recommended installation instructions.

Print settings for all parts except the star feeder:

Print Material: PLA, PLA+, or Hyper PLA 

Layer Height = .20 mm
Nozzle Temp = 200C-225C
Bed Temp = 50C
2 wall loops 
3 top shell layers
3 bottom shell layers
15% Adaptive Cubic or Triangular infill
Standard Supports with 30 degree threshold angle

***For the lid you may want to enable the fuzzy surface option if available to make attaching and detaching the lid easier. My initial print was completely smooth and it made it rather difficult to secure.***

*** If you have a 220mm x 220mm print bed you can print all of these parts, however you may need to rotate the base 45 degree so that the mouth is facing the corner of the print bed otherwise you may get an error that the obj is too large and won't fit, this is because the supports will extend past the maximum print area, however, if you rotate the print, you should have plenty of room, but you may need to disable the brim ***

For the Star Feeder I recommend making it as lightweight as possible as it can be taxing on the stepper motor. I printed multiple versions and found that 2 wall loops and 2 top and bottom shell layers with 5-10% triangle infill worked best for the 6 star version, you might be able to get away with a higher infill percentage on the 4 star, however if you are going to use this as an automatic feeder with food, you will most likely need a stronger stepper motor and higher infill %

For the stepper gear, I recommend a 40%-50% infill and to print at a slower speed or you may run into fitment issues, when you insert the gear, do it in the opposite direction as what you would think, the small extrusion on the top is a spacer to allow space between the blades of the star feeder and the base plate. If you're having rubbing issues or food getting caught under the blades you can glue a piece of wax paper to the base plate although the gear spacer should be sufficient.

To prevent sliding on the floor I used some cheap drawer liner from the dollar store and used a glue stick to adhere it to the bottom of the base and cut off the excess, it works great and is cheap. 

Assembly instructions:
Print Base First and make sure stepper motor, stepper driver, micro controller, and breadboard fit in the base. Next, print the base plate and chute. I gave some extra room in the dado slots for the chute so that it can be glued in place once confirming fit is good. Once you have wired everything and you are sure it works, run a USB-C or DC power cable through the back and plug into the Arduino Uno or power supply module (I prefer the USB-C as I can just plug it into my computer to reprogram without needing to disassemble the entire thing) run the wires for the esp32 cam through the groove on the side of the base, and use the M3x8 bolts to mount the base and stepper motor through the holes. Next mount the stepper gear to the stepper motor shaft and the fit the star feeder on top. Last attach the upper body, use the M3x4 hex bolts to mount the upper body into place. Assemble the ESP32 Cam holder using the M3x30 and an M3 Nut, and run the cables through the square upper body hole before mounting to the upper body. Once the cables are ran through the square hole  mount the Camera arm to the upper body using 2 M3x20 bolts and two M3 hex nuts. Install Camera into the Cam Holder, and attach the backer plate and attach wires to their correct GPIO Pins. Once that is done attach the lid and you are all set, just plug your USB-C or DC power in and press the button to initialize everything.

Everything for this project was made in Fusion 360 and was coded in the Arduino IDE, I've never been great at coding but by using the built in examples and having Chat GPT help, everything seems to be running perfectly. There is a method where you can actually have the ESP32 Cam upload the photos to Google Photos so you'll get notified whenever your doggo presses the button, however that is way out of my scope, however I linked a great youtube video in the Read_Me file that goes step by step of how to set up the Google Photo uploads. As for the code, the code I'm using should be in the attached .txt documents below and are perfectly functional to pull the photos off of the SD card.