This is my second Petcube Bites and after a few years of operation it stopped dispensing treats. Treats started getting jammed between the rotating loader head thingy and the slot loading to the launcher chute and I’d have to empty it out and pick out the offending treat, only to have it jam the next time around. Using the little reducer didn’t seem to matter. The unit would growl and whirrrrr for 10-15 seconds before it timed out, it sounded like it had a stripped gear inside.
No other option other than throwing it away, I opened it up to take a look:
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[photos – flickr: Petcube Bites 2.0 teardown]
The unit was designed simpler than the 1st generation Petcube Bites. That one had a spring loaded flipper thing that I seem to recall just stopped working and I couldn’t fix it after I took it apart too. The 2.0 just has two motors, one for the “loader” at the top and another for the “launcher” on the side. I knew the 2.0 would launch treats with some force across my apartment, after opening it up I found out why. The launcher motor spins up at a pretty good clip the whole time while waiting for the loader to feed in treats, then turns off. The whirrrrring sound I heard seems to be the launcher motor running empty until it times out.
The first gen had sensors in the launcher chute which I assume is to tell if a treat dropped or not. One the 2nd gen both motors have a wheel that passes through opto-interrupters, which I’m wondering measures slight changes in RPM to figure out if a treat has been fed through.
Update 11/27/2024:
It’s jamming again. After scooping the treats out of the way and looking at the feeder mechanism, I think what is happening is that a treat is being plucked by the rotating head but is hanging out on the ledge of the chute. Instead of falling in it just hangs there and the motor keeps trying to crush it. I thought I’d seen the motor change direction before, but in this case it keeps twisting and twisting until it times out.
If it would just back off and reverse part of a turn to let the stuck treat drop, I think that would fix this.
