Inspiration
We wanted to work on a home automation system, but found that covering everything we wanted to was just too much. Brian has fish and so we narrowed down our scope to focus on automating and monitoring a specific scenario.
What it does
It has a water temperature sensor, a water level sensor that alerts when the water level drops below an expected value, a light based sensor that alerts when the food level drops below an expected value, and a motorized arm that opens a cover so that food can be dispensed in preferred quantities. All of this is accessible through a web facing interface allowing the user to feed and monitor their fish from anywhere with internet access.
How we built it
Ryan and Brian got their first experience with Arduino, so they focused on simply getting the arduino and a few useful sensors working. Brian and Albert (AJ) worked heavily on the 3D modeling and 3D printing for the housing and hopper.
Challenges we ran into
2/3rds of the team had 0 experience with the Arduino so getting a solid understanding of how the system works, how the IDE works, and for the most part, how electrical wiring and circuits even work. After we started understanding the basic IO and wiring, getting the web interface looking even half decent for presentation was frustrating as the styling and customization enabled by our methods was minimal.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We came into this with little experience and even littler idea of what we were making until Saturday, so putting together the system that we have in that time is much more than any of us expected. In the end everything came together better than any of use probably expected.
What we learned
How to work with Arduino and create an interactive motorized system.
What's next for I Love the Fishies
We will be working to refine the system, re-print some parts for better sizing, improving the code to make it more interactive and have even more useful alerts in the future.
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