How Python saved a rescue dog - a foster fail story

At the end of 2017, my partner and I decided to foster a rescue dog. The dog had been treated badly by its previous owner and, as a result, was on anti-anxiety medication on an 8 hour schedule. When the end of the foster time approached, nobody came forward to adopt the dog, and we had to return from leave, we needed a solution to administer the medication to the dog during work hours. Born from a crazy idea, we sourced parts from the local hardware store, used an Onion Omega2+ IoT board and developed Python code to built a custom, remotely controlled medication feeder.

This talk will tell the story of a foster fail, how Python helped to save the life of a rescue dog and how the initial medication feeder grew from a single IoT device into a full Internet of Dog (IoD) madness. I will show the design and implementation of the initial Python-based medication feeder, what we have learned from running it over the summer and how it has continued to grow into a multi IoT device, Python-powered, full dog carer solution. There will be microservice architecture drawings, Python code, and, of course, pictures of the dog!