Dog Ball Toss Robot, With Talking and Feeding

The video shows how the unit works. There is a link at the end that shows the whole build cycle.

This is a video of the build cycle. Enjoy

This picture shows many of the drawings for the mechanical part of the ball toss robot.

You will have to have a part 3D printed. You will have to learn a little about the following programs. FreeCad, Arduino IDE, Eagle schematic capture. You can find all the build files at the link below.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yBs_4M2VmrRMMkbPBISfBAzqfKwdwcbZ?usp=sharing There is a phone app you will need to setup. The app is available for both iPhone and Android. It is called BLE Terminal. There is a PDF file at the link above showing how to setup the app to work with the ball toss unit. There is also a PDF file at the above link with instructions how to setup the MP3 files on a microSD disk. In FreeCad there are several main files. From these files you can find sketches of parts In wooden frame folder open Ball Thrower assembly2 file. This will give all the parts for the ball toss wooden frame. In Feeder Drawing folder Latest Parts folder open hopper fully assembled3 This will give you all the parts for the feeder. In Ball toss electronics folder open Electroics packaaged This will give you the parts for electronics enclosure. In Ball toss electronics folder open battery compartment this will give you all the parts for the battery holder. The above instructions are in a ReadMe file in the link above

This is the ball tube made from 3" ID PVC cut lengthwise and to about 10.5" long

This shows gluing up the ball funnel. Use a good wood glue.

These photos show various steps of assembly. Follow the drawings in the FreeCad drawins.

These drawings show assembly of the back of the funnel supports.

These pictures show the assembly and glue up of the feeder parts.

This shows the gluing up of the electronics enclosure and battery compartment.

This phone app is available for both android and iPhone. It is called BLE Terminal. Look at the PDF file in the link in step 1 or 2.

After trying this out with a couple of dogs I had to make a couple of changes.

The flex sensor was not reliable at detecting when the ball was in the hopper. It was replaced with a switch with a long lever glued to the lever and then the switch is mounted vertical to the hopper. This turned out to be much more reliable. There were also a couple of software changes I needed to make along with a change to the phone app. These changes can be found at the following link.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1tk7k3eDQID...

The instructions can be found in the PDF labeled Issue resolution dated 8_7_2021 (1)