Inspiration
My inspiration for this project is my leopard Gecko, Geno, and the 10 mealworms he needs to eat each week. While Geno has had to eat all of his life (I know... it's a crazy concept right?), due to recent cricket shortages caused by Covid-19 he has needed to switch to eating mealworms. When crickets were used to feed him, every 1-2 weeks a new box of crickets would be dropped into his terrarium, and he would hunt for them as he became hungry. However, with mealworms a caretaker such as myself must hand feed him every other day. This project will help me keep track of the amount of food he has eaten.
What it does
I have coded an Arduino Mega to light up a single LED for every meal worm fed to Geno. The number of mealworms fed to him each night will be kept track of using buttons connected to the Arduino.
How we built it
First the set up of this project was designed in a program called Tinkercad. Tinkercad allowed me to prototype without the need to gather materials or make costly mistakes like breaking LEDs or shorting the Arduino in real life. Additionally, I was able to create all code needed for the project in Tinkercad, and when completed, that code could be sent to the Arduino IDE and uploaded to the Arduino Mega.
Challenges we ran into
One challenge that I ran into was figuring out how to keep track of the number of times a button was pressed. Although it sounds simple, I continuously made mistakes, and I still consider myself a beginner when using Arduinos as I've only made a few, very simple projects using them.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I'm proud that I was able to finish this project in a single day while still attending many workshops. Although it may not be the most advanced project made in this Hackathon, it was still a pretty big project for me to take on alone.
What we learned
I learned how to use, code, and implement buttons into projects with Arduinos.
What's next for Geno Delizioso - Reptile Food Tracker
One next step that I would like to take with the Geno Delizioso system, is to implement sensors that could keep track of the temperature, humidity, and possible the amount of water left in his water dish. These would all help me to better take care of him, and increase my knowledge of Arduino. Additionally, I would like to decrease the size of the electronic components so that a 3D printed case could be made for the system.
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