Electronics - Motor repair success

I fixed my broken motor that is meant to power the auger via the tiny gearbox that will deliver the fish food in my demand fish feeder.

Normally I prefer less complicated sentences.

But I'm all excited.

It turns out, the problem was there were simply too many parts.

Or more accurately one too many parts, and one that was simply in the way.

The silver bit was the one too many. I think that broke off the bit where the wires connect, and fell into the motor, generally clagging things up.





The little nylon washer creates part of the front bearing, but it made getting the brushes back on impossible, because it had to be put on after the brushes. That's an impossible path through the plastic front. I don't have the kinds of quantum tools that walking through walls requires. And if I did, I wouldn't waste my time with motor repairs. I'd do much more interesting stuff, like poking my head through the fridge to see if the light really does go off when the door is closed.

So be leaving out those two small parts, I managed to make my motor work.

Only two parts.

And they were tiny.

Those that know me will realise that's a pretty low number of excess bits after a repair. I think I did quite well.

So well in fact, that it looks like this when it's running.

That should do nicely.

What this all means, is that there is really no reason why I cant put this thing together today, and actually finish something.

Maybe.








120 Things in 20 years - If I keep repairing them, one day an electronic motor repair might leave me with enough parts to eventually build another motor. I should fix cars.

Electronics - Aquaponics - Demand fish feeder software

As far as I know, the software is all working on my demand fish feeder.

It's a bit of a mess, with a few goto statements and a few unused variables. I'll fix it in time, but for now I'm going to move onto getting a finished product up and running. As far as I can tell with the software simulator everything works, but the real world might be a completely different story. (the breadboard version also works)








A switch lever extends down into the water. If a light near the lever is lit, the fish can press the lever and feed is delivered. Feed can also be offered with an override button that sets the light on and the feed on if the fish hit the lever (so you can show people how it works)

Dawn detection seems to work. In the end I went with two startup options.

1. A human who holds down the FeedNow override button during startup, then taps out the approximate number of hours since dawn. This skips the code that searches for a new dawn.

2. An abnormal restart with no human. This stops all feeding (there might have been a blackout, and subsequent ammonia buildup) (note to self - add code that flashes some lights to indicate the device is in abnormal start mode so a human can reboot it if they desire). Feeding resumes after night time is detected, and a dawn is detected.

The user can select (via a screwdriver to resist little finger making their own adjustments) ...

 - the feed amount per day in tenths of a second of motor on - from 0 to 65 (I'm guessing I'll use 1/2 a second per feed event) The motor turns an auger under a hopper full of feed. So there is another adjustment available

- The number of feeds in a day that are offered (0 - 255 per day)

- The level of light at which dawn is detected. This allows for a system built in the glow of a streetlight or whatever. At dawn each day, all the numbers reset. This is a bit of a problem as far as reading how many feeds were delivered in a day, but for now I'll leave it as it is. My fish feed like crazy at dawn, so I want to give them the greatest opportunity to feed. Eventually I'll add a data logger, so it wont matter when it resets.


The system reports...

- the number of hours since dawn

- the number of feeds since dawn

- The number of false hits to the feed lever when the FeedIsAvailableLED is NOT lit (these will go down to near zero once the fish learn they can only get food when the light is on)


I ran out of feed a while back, and have been feeding my two big silvers on duckweed, lettuce, and worms, so I will need some pellet food before I can test it in the real world. (I still have the PVC device from the first version).

I'll also need a motor as my original one is no longer with us.

The feeding regimen isn't very intelligent at the moment, but I'll do a bit of research, and add some code that tries to deliver the maximum amount of feed in a day that the system can handle. This will probably involve allowing 3/4 of the feed to be dumped at will, with the rest being spaced out over the day ... or something. I haven't given it enough thought because I don't really know what the fish need. My experience in fishing for wild fish indicates that the feeding pattern is far from a constant grazing all day long. I'll work it out.

But...

It's going to work. In fact, it already does.


120 Things in 20 years That's all. Just 120 Things in 20 years.

Electronics - Reasonable success milestone

What's pink and white, and looks a bit like a short alien under stage lighting, talking to a tall man with a diode for an upper leg, and a friend with a paper bag over his head?

Nope.

Too much Christmas spirit.

120 Things in 20 years - Electronics - Demand feeder diorama 

120 Things in 20 years - As at 2012 12 24 23:56 my demand feeder actually works (if you include a light where a motor should be as "working" (which I do)). I declare this point in time , an Official reasonable electronics success milestone.

Electronics - Aquaponics management system

I've decided to remake my demand feeder from scratch.

I just couldn't figure out what was wrong with existing model, and it may well be because there were just some random bits soldered on. Some stuff didn't seem to serve any function.

So I thought I'd start with some proper documentation and some kind of plan. That way I can work out which chip I need, depending on what functionality I require, and also some plan for expansion.

I also plan on making it work as a demand feeder before making it do anything else like regulate how much feed the fish can have. At the moment my fish can have as much as they want, because I have much more filtration system that I need to cope with only two fish.

The plan looks like this at the moment.

I just started.















I realise that isn't very informative as far as pictures go, but it does in some small way, indicate just how much more I have to do.


120 Things in 20 years - I'm exhausted already just thinking about thinking about the plan on how to make an electronics based aquaponics management system.

Aquaponics - Electronics - Digital demand fish feeder

The water temperature in my aquaponics fish tank is today sitting at around 20c This means my silver perch are back to feeding like crazy.

I suspect they would eat a lot more if I fed them 20 times a day, so I rummaged around in the darkest depths of my house, and found my demand fish feeder project.

When I made it as part of trying to learn electronics, I happened to be on lots and lots of morphine because I had a rock festering in my kidney. At least I think that's what it was for.

Geology is interesting and all, but who wants to grow rocks in your kidney.

Anyway, it seems that whatever you learn when your brain is in an opiate fog stays in that fog. At least it did for me.

Every now and again I've discovered this poor little open source project, and tried to figure out what it does, and why it doesn't do what it should do, and it always ends in my just putting it back into the darkest part of my house, and leaving it there until for some new reason I think I'll understand it again.

Yesterday I looked at it and it made sense.

Only a bit, but that's a bit more than usual, and I wasn't even on morphine.

I traced everything from the pins to whatever input or output  (switches or lights) devices were attached, and almost all of it seemed to do something. The three adjustable gizmos (pots) in the top right are not connected, but I looked at my code, and worked out what they should be connected to (they adjust food amount, total food allowed in a day, and light sensitivity to trigger the dawn reset.

There are also these four resistors that dont seem to do anything.

I'm guessing they are either, connected to the potentiometers (adjustable gizmos) or have something to do with the second circuit that I found.

The second circuit looks like this, and I'm pretty sure it was meant to be mounted like this.

It has a button and a switch.

I remember making a water proof override switch so I could give the fish a dose of food when I visited them and wanted to see them hit the demand lever and get fed.





Now the four resistors might be for the pots, but I cant remember if they needed resistors. They are, after all, resistors.

I think.

But some things need resistors so they don't feed ambient static into the chip, and give false readings that look like button presses or whatever.

Who knows, but it feels a bit like I'm almost, right on the edge of nearly being back on track.




120 things in 20 years Aquaponics - Digital demand fish feeders are sometimes better off recycled and started from scratch.

Electronics - Final board layout

At last it's decided.

I've settled on a hybrid between the two previous designs for my demand fish feeder circuit board layout.

Now we have a small extra board set at 90 degrees for the two momentary (press them on then they go off when you let them go) switches, and the power switch will be on the battery pack.

The board also extends below the main board to allow room for some labels.







There will be three trim pots for in-field adjustment, and this will create settings for the maximum number of feeds per day, the size of those feeds, and the last will be to calibrate when dawn is detected.

I'm not really sure how I'll implement the dawn detection, but it will probably rely on some kind of requirement for an increase in light levels over an hour or something.

Due to the fact that I'm running out of pins to use on the PICAXE 14M2 chip, I only have room for two LED's (lights) to flash out the values for the 3 trim pot settings. This will be dealt with by by having the mode button switch between each 3 trim pots, and the normal operating mode.

The two internal lights will indicate the values by flashing.

• When the "Feeds" trim pot is being adjusted, the green LED behind it will report it's value.
• When the "Size" trim pot is being adjusted, the red LED behind it will report it's value.
• When the Dawn trim pot is being adjusted, both the red and green LED's will flash out it's value.

In experimentation, this has proven to be quite intuitive, and easy to read. 

The dawn setting will probably never have to be adjusted once it is calibrated to local conditions to take account of street lighting etc, so was the obvious choice for not having it's own light.

The other two settings might be changed one a month or so, and as a result were deemed to be more important.

The placement of the buttons on the new circuit board, also allows for my absurdly clever water proof switch idea, allowing the "Feed Now" button to be pressed from the outside.

Which is nice.

The "Feed now" button will light the lever indicator light, telling the fish if they hit the lever some feed will be delivered. This function is in anticipation of the user (me) being overly excited about their new fish feeder, and wanting to see, or show others, the fish triggering the lever to receive feed. It will override the forced wait between feeds, but the feed will still be counted and deducted from their total allowed feed for the day.

120 Things in 20 years, not just Electronics - Final board layout, but also absurdly clever waterproof switch ideas!

Electronics - Aquaponics - Demand fish feeder proof of concept

So the aquaponics demand fish feeder works.

Or at least the proof of concept bit works. Not the PICAXE and electronics bit.

The PVC, the motor, the hopper, and the screw all seem to work well together.












It looks like this....



This is just me touching the wires to a battery rather than the electronics triggering this, so the amount it is delivering each time is a little random.

But it will work just fine.

Yay.

Now, where did I put my education. I really need some of it now for the electronics.

I wish I had paid attention in school.