Week 1 Post 2

At Home Research

     After discussing what we should do for our pet feeder design, we thought it would be nice to do some research on pets. We decided that for our prototype, we should focus on one specific type of pet so we decided to gear our design towards feeding dogs. This way, we can account for how big the food chunks are and how much should be fed.

     If you were to leave dog food out and allow the dog to eat it whenever it wants, the dog will inevitably gain weight. This is why having a consistent eating schedule for a dog is so important and our automatic pet feeder should do just that. According to Petfinder, dogs should be fed twice a day with an amount based off their weight to maintain health. 

Here is a chart of how much a dog should be fed: 

    

     A medium sized dog should weigh around 50 lbs. So, we will design our prototype that weight for now and potentially expand it later. For a 50 lb dog, it should be fed around 5 cups of dog food. That means that the 5 cups should be separated into two servings of 2.5 cups of dog food per serving. 

Source:

https://www.petfinder.com/dogs/dog-nutrition/how-much-to-feed-your-dog/

http://stevesrealfood.com/mo/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Daily-Feeding-Recommendation-2.5.jpg