[Brian] has a fairly large 400 liter aquarium and loves the fish that call it home. Unfortunately, sometimes life gets in the way of keeping those fish fed on a regular basis. There are automatic fish feeders out there on the market and [Brian] gave one a try. Although it worked, it dropped one huge clump of food in at a time (rather than sprinkling it in), the food hopper held a very small amount of food and the unit drained a new set of batteries in less than a week. Fifty euros were spent on purchasing that auto feeder and in the end it wasn’t any more convenient than just feeding the fish.
Faced with a tough decision on whether or not to buy another product he may not be happy with, [Brian] decided to make his own automatic fish feeder system out of parts anyone can find lying around the house. The main housing is a small Tupperware bin, inside of which 3 pieces of plastic were glued together to make a v-shaped hopper. The fish food is loaded into the hopper and as it falls to the bottom it meets a reverse-spinning drill bit that acts like an auger, pushing the food out of the container. The drill bit is powered by a small stepper motor connected to the drill bit by an improvised coupling made from a silicone sealant cap!
The control system is an Arduino and a stepper motor driver chip. Through trial and error [Brian] figured out that 100,000 half steps of the motor dumped a good amount of food into the tank. The drill bit delivery method even sprinkles the food nicely for total fish enjoyment. To keep the food flowing at regular intervals, an AC timer unit controls how often the Arduino is powered on and subsequently feeds the fish.
Quite nice!
I like the simplicity of this.
Put a propeller on it, and amuse the fish (for their 3-second memory cycle) !
Fish actually have much longer memories than most people.
Do you think they know that they are wet?
One fish I’ve recently met said they don’t. (S)he was weird, though, so I don’t know for sure.
See, I was also curious about this, but I knew I’d find my answers in Japan.
Now he needs to market this – and preferably a pond version … crowd funding? I’m in!
So he uses a timer to turn on a Arduino to turn on a motor???
Why not just put the motor on a timer?
I was wondering that, use a microwave oven turntable motor and it couldn’t be simpler.
I love the simple design! It looks like it works great. I guess the only improvement would be to add a RTC to it instead and then you wouldn’t have to rely on an AC timer.
I don’t see what’s wrong, the Arduino controls the motor driver after all. If the motor were a DC, I think your solution is the better solution.
A couple of pager motors mounted on the white plastic might help prevent the flakes from bunching up and not reaching the auger. Might have to play with speed and weight a little though.
The drill bit as an augur is brilliant !
I pondered about doing this, but could not find a suitable augur. Thought about 3d printing an augur, but with no 3d printer, that is kind of hard …
The drill bit is awesome, yes :)
This is excellent, very nicely done.
I just wish my tank looked as nice (big catfish make big messes).
COOL. Every project needs a gratuitous use of an Arduino. For sending pulses to a stepper, a 556 chip with a pulse timer and a gating timer would have done just fine. Kids these days.
Its a public service, really. Otherwise what would you bitter old farts complain about?
Oh yeah… you always find something.
You know, he can just add an RTC now and stop using the timer. Or, as I remember, he mentioned something like starting with slow rotation, then gradually increasing the speed. When I’ll be making something like that, I’ll add some smart house system connectivity function, to provide logs about feed times and, possibly, signal about need to refill the container. Where’s your 556 now?
At that point it wouldn’t be a hack anymore.
Why not? It’d be a hack, just better, requiring even less interaction than the previous.
Also, if there’s a count of added features after which hack is no longer a hack, where’s that point then?
You can pick up Arduino pro micro clones for around £2 each now. I bought 15 from china last time I ordered and just throw them into a project when needed. It would cost me £2 to get a 556 delivered. The Arduino can be a 556, but can the 556 be an Arduino?
The 556 cannot be an Arduino but 15 of them will run $0.52 in DIP form from Digikey. So even if you avoid the Massimo tax you are paying way more.
The title for this article is amazing: an automatic fish feeder that automatically feeds fish?! I never would have guessed! Clever, guys!
I wonder if it is automatic
The drill bit as an auger is an excellent idea.
Well done !
How is the hopper mouth coping with the vapour from the heated tank? The auto-feeder I have, gets wet from condensation and then the flakes just makes one big mess, resulting in you having to take it apart and self-feeding for a while. I might just try this one none the less, the auger (and possibly vibration motors as suggested) might negate some of the clogging.
why not create a slippery slide so it’s not directly over the vapour?
One of those cheap mechanical timers no less. The first gear is made out of some “silent” plastic that turns to crumbs.
When it breaks just use the motor inside to drive the drill bit directly