Pet Feeder with programable times

XOD Programming Questions
1

Hi,
The idea is to build a pet feeder that drives a linear actuator that allows the animal to access the feed.
Open at time A open for a period of time then close. Maybe 2 or 3 opening times.
I’m not sure where I should start with my project. I feel it needs to be broken into units.

  1. Time setup
  2. Open times (like alarm clocks)
  3. Maybe a manual override.
  4. I’d like to make it solar-powered down in the future so maybe sleep function.
    So I see I would need a menu system to access the step and put it into manual/auto.
    So I need to find a suitable RTC module, a way to sort the feed data.
    If the times were locked in code be a lot easier.
    Does anyone know of some good places I can research the project or similar to get it all in my head…
2

RTC example: Digital Clock Example — Working with RTC Modules — XOD

The simplest solution would be to open the feeder for 1 hour at specific hours. This allows you to have the feeder open if hour=X or hour=Y or hour=Z and ignore other clock outputs. Only slightly more difficult is to open feeder for X minutes at specific hours, in which case you check for hour= and min>X and min<Y. If you want to be able to open and close at specific times, then it becomes quite a bit more complicated to get the conditions for opening feeder correct.

3

Thanks, I hope to have an RTC module arrive this week to play.