Make an automatic fish feeder with light using Arduino via instructables
As a student I wanted something to flourish up my room. A small fish tank seemed perfect. But since I’m always away for the weekend or even longer periods during summer holidays, I wouldn’t be able to feed the fish, and they probably won’t like that so much. So I had to come up with a solution. When I had some spare time, I started brainstorming about some way to automate the feeding and keep it as compact as possible.
On the Internet, there are many ways to make an automatic feeder, but all I found were messy solutions with mostly servo motors. These feeders are big and it’s hard to set the right quantity of food.
I designed a screw that’s 3d-printable in Inventor. With this screw (driven by a stepper) I “extrude” the food through a tube from the reservoir to the drop zone. I can set the feed duration in seconds, which gives me an exact same food quantity every single time.
IMPORTANT NOTE: I tried it with several types of food. Flakes tend to jam the screw. The fish granulate works best.
An RTC module keeps track of time and a stepper driver gets his commands from an on-board Arduino Nano. I also added two small led panels (white and blue), brightness can be set with two separate potentiometers. Here is how I made it.
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