One of my two smart feeders (the newest) was bumping and having problems putting the feed to my cats. After a lot of time, I went up online and found a Reddit post that had very valuable information.
Some users had good luck removing the rubber bands from the spinning part of the feeder, but the user Set-Condition-5 wrote the following:
Team, while removing the rubber guards helped, it turned out our jamming
problem was caused by the screw that connects the white main gear you see when
you remove the top housing ( the half with the food) to the motor being
completely loose. If you remove the small white cap on the gear you can access
the screw and tighten. This stops the gear from raising up which was causing our
jamming.
This screw is this one (click on the image to get a color one ;)):
After I tightened that screw, the feeder did not bump anymore! However the “stuck” light was still on and when trying to serve one portion, it went forward (regular portion), then backwards a bit… this 3 times. It is the behaviour it does when trying to unstuck the feeder. And it did this even without cat food on it…!
So, instead of using the product’s warranty I disassembled it without no warranty of survival for the feeder. Yes, you shouldn’t do this if you can still use the warranty…! WARRANTY WARRANTY WARRANTY!
And below the servomotor I found that little black thing:
And found that from the 4 legs it has, only 2 were attached to the board, the other two were broken! As I have another feeder, I tested this one with the other sensor board and it worked perfectly… so it was time to find that component online and perform surgery.
In particular this component is a transmissive photomicrosensor, which senses when the plastic wheel below the servomotor is able to spin. This way the control board understands that the servo was able to spin correctly. If not, it’s stuck. If the component is broken… this is never detected!
I wasn’t able to find the same component, but ProtossGP32 found out the Omrom EE-SX1041 transmissive photomicrosensor, which was the same size as this one. So I ordered a couple online in AliExpress and waited until they came.
After that, with desoldering wick and some patience I removed the remaining solder I was able to fit the new component. Be sure to check how to place the component. In the board you’ll see the symbol for LEDs on one side. This component has an LED on one side and a light receptor on the other. Make sure that you place the K (Cathode) and the A (Anode) on the LED part.
View from the top:
View of the component upside down where you can see the cathode and anode with K
and A:
And finally the soldered component:
And by doing so, the feeder was functional again! First I tried without food and it worked properly. And with food too!
Happy cats again :)