[Dmitri] wanted to buy an automatic feeding setup for his aquarium, but he found that most off-the-shelf feeders are really inaccurate with portion control. [Dmitri]’s fish is sensitive to overfeeding, so an off-the-shelf feeder wouldn’t get the job done. Since [Dmitri] knows a thing or two about electronics, he set out to build his own microcontroller-based automatic feeding machine.
[Dmitri]’s machine is based around a MSP430 that starts feeding at scheduled times and controls how much food is dispensed. The MSP lives on a custom PCB that [Dmitri] designed, which includes a stepper motor driver and input for an endstop sensor. The board is wired to a stepper motor that advances a small wooden board with a series of holes in it. Each hole is filled with a single serving of food. The board slides along a piece of U-channel, and food drops out of each hole into the aquarium when the hole reaches the end of the channel.
The whole build is very well documented, and [Dmitri] explains each block of his schematic in detail. His firmware is also open-source, so you can build your own fish feeder based off of his design. Check out the video after the break to see the feeder in action.
Awesome! Just have to remember to keep the food storage topped up. :)
I still want to 3D print myself a corkscrew cat-feeder, but I love feeding them myself so much that I would feel bad for automating it.
Nice mechanics, but no battery-backed RTC to keep the feeding schedule after blackouts?
It seems to be quite noisy, I wonder if the fish will Pavlov to the sound?
Ivan Pavlov is standing in line a the deli counter behind a few other customers. After waiting a few minutes and not seeing the butcher, the woman at the front of the line rings the bell for service.
Ivan suddenly says “Oh, I just remembered, I need to feed the dogs!”
That’s a whole lotta kit for something as simple as feeding fish.
We talked about this on reddit. It was one of those projects that starts, “This is the only motor I have and I want to use it.”
I agree that a simple DC gear motor and a sensor or a solenoid and a ratcheting gear system would have made for a much simpler build.
Could have used a plain old light timer with the timer peg moving a strip
with raised peg every 24 hours?
Does a fish know its wet?
I could think of a dozen different ways to feed a fish, but this is a clean, tight build, right down to the custom PCB. Good job!
Let’s hope it isn’t affected by the moisture. Most tropical and marine setup’s give off a lot of moisture so keeping the hopper and electronics dry would be key.