We get it. You love your fish, but they can’t bark or gently nip at your shin flesh to let you know they’re hungry. (And they always kind of look hungry, don’t they?) One day bleeds into the next, and you find yourself wondering if you’ve fed them yet today. Or are you thinking of yesterday? Fish deserve better than that. Why not build them a smart fish feeder?
Domovoy is a completely open-source automatic fish feeder that lets you feed them on a schedule, over Bluetooth, or manually. This simple yet elegant design uses a small stepper motor to drive a 3D-printed auger to deliver the goods. Just open the lid, fill ‘er up with flakes, and program up to four feedings per day through the 3-button and LCD interface. You can even set the dosage, which is measured in complete revolutions of the auger.
It’s built around an ATMega328P, but you’ll have to spin your own board and put the feeder together using his excellent instructions. Hungry to see this feeder in action? Just swim past the break.
Can’t be bothered to feed your fish automatically? Train them to feed themselves.
give a fish a fish and you have two fish, but teach a fish to fish, and you have a sideshow attraction.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you’ve just given up your monopoly on fishing.
Nice build, by the way. I think a small improvement would be to have the outer end pivot of the auger (part of the case, as it stands) to be a twist-lock removeable plate so it can be undone and the auger slid out for cleaning or unjamming.
No, I can tell you from watching my pond that if you give a fish a fish you get one fat fish.
I can think of a couple of budgies who would like this when filled with birdseed.
Budgies like everything when they are filled with birdseed.
I built a very simple fish feeder once; An auger taped up from a milk jug with a horizontal tube in the bottom. The auger in the tube was a stretched spring that then connected to a small geared motor. I drove the motor with the speaker output from a keyring toy that made engine sounds for a few seconds when a button was pushed. This was then hooked up to an A.C. relay which was triggered twice a day by an A.C. wall timer. The design was based on what was available in the drawer.