How to make a DIY automatic dog feeder

Choose a design

• There are a number of ways to design a gravity feeder. The essential part: Stacking the dog kibble vertically so as your dog eats from the bottom, more kibble will gradually spill out.
• Adjust this design so it’s easy for you to build and your dogs to enjoy. Larger dogs may have an easier time eating out of four-inch material. You may prefer to skip the wood frame completely and mount the feeder directly to a wall.
  • Note: Keep the feeder inside, not in an outdoor dog house, or you’ll also be feeding the wildlife.
• For this feeder, I opted for a 3-in. PVC body on a 1×8 wood frame. I found the pipe strapping and wood frame gave good stability, and the friction fit of the PVC sufficiently held it in place without glue, even when the dogs got excited around meal time.
• The 1×8 wood frame is wide enough to look good when paired with 3-in. PVC pipe. It adds enough weight so the feeder has some stability, making the dogs less likely to knock it over.
• A quick note on materials: Many websites and advocacy groups contend PVC is unsafe for food storage because it contains bisphenol A (BPA). We consulted Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines on PVC and BPA, and found no recommendation against using PVC for short-term food storage. But do your own research, and make the decision you feel is right for you and your pet.
• If you don’t trust your dog’s sense of self-restraint, it’s possible to add a dispensing element regulated by a timer control, like the Arduino microcontroller. Arduino kits let you custom-build electronically controlled devices. But working with one requires its own set of skills, so we haven’t tackled that here.