Feed Your Fish using an Arduino

Having fish as your pet is a totally different experience. It never makes any sound, would usually love a companion and no guest would ask you to lock it up before they enter the house. But yeah, they require much care and attention in terms of food, water temperature etc, etc. While you cannot regulate temperature on your own and need a machine for it, food intake is to be regulated and should always be precise. That’s why most of the owners take care of it themselves and count the food pellets as per the number of fish and their size.

So, when this really careful owner is out of the town who, is going to take care of the fish? The ever helping neighbor, housekeeper or the family? Do any of these people would be well aware of the feeding requirements? Well, if you own an Arduino and a few electronic junk, you don’t need any of them.

Chienline’s DIY on making an automatic fish feeding machine is exactly that, where he combines an Arduino Uno with a floppy drive stepper motor, hard drive enclosures, an adapter and such other parts to construct an automatic fish feeding machine.

A 7 step DIY, this feeder takes the best from the waste in a very lucid manner. Although some bugs did come when it was put to work, but being quite minor, they didn’t require any change in the wiring or the coding. The author has even shared a couple of videos where he describes the motion of the machine when it encounters bug.

Though ready to use, this DIY, being an open source derivative, can be modified. One can change the frequency of feeding as well as control the number of pellets to be fed. Also, this DIY drives its power from the mains, don’t you think adding in a battery would make it better? What else can you do in here?