TECH

This Arduino Is Feeding The Fishes

Fish are easy to keep pets, requiring little more than regular feeding to keep them happy in the short-to-medium term. If you are going on holiday, it may be nice to know that your pets are being taken care of, but finding someone to take on the chore can be hard. [Trevor_DIY] does not need to worry about that, however - he's built an automatic feeder to handle the job.
The build uses an Arduino Uno as the brains, with the only additional hardware required being a stepper motor and driver. The stepper motor drives a 3D printed wheel, with 14 slots - each one holding one meal for the fish. This allows the feeder to deliver two meals a day for a full week before requiring attention.
The feeder is configured to feed the breakfast meal, then a meal meal 8 hours later, and then wait 16 hours before breakfast comes around again. Rather than using the real-time clock, this is simply handled with the Arduino's built-in delay function. While it is not very accurate, this should be close enough to keep the fish alive. We would be interested to just how much it drifts over time.
Overall, it's a quick and tidy way to keep the pets going without a lot of fuss. Pet feeders are a popular project, as they solve the common problem faced by owners the world over; this one can even handle wet cat food. Video after the break.

Lewin Day