Jabba Feeder (Hungry Hungry Chameleon)

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  Altium Mockup (Bottom)

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  Altium Mockup (Top)

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  PCB (Top)

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  Beauty Shot

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  PCB (Angled)

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  PCB (Bottom)

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  View which shows the cricket holding reservoir, open door, and glimpse down the chute. Inside the chute you can see the lit IR Break Beams

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  Design Inspiration

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  NODE Red Frontend

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  NODE Red Backend

Inspiration

One day, JD was looking at his brother's chameleon and he though, "Man, that chameleon looks rather famished. What if we could build a device that feeds him on a routine basis? Then he would never be hungry!" From that day forward, we embarked on a mission to ensure that no captive chameleon suffers the fate of hunger.

What it does

This device allows a user to remotely feed their chameleon (or other animal). It dispenses a user-specified number of crickets (or other food source) at the user's command.

How we built it

We built the casework for this device using 3-D printing. The design was modelled after Jabba the Hutt's palace in Star Wars. The electronic components were controlled by a SAMD21 microcontroller on a custom PCB designed by us. These components allow the device to function as desired.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into numerous challenges throughout the construction of this device. From the PCB designed to actually coding the microcontroller, there were numerous hurdles that we had to overcome to ensure the successful operation of this device. This biggest challenges were linking the node red to the device for an easy user interface and actually writing the drivers/interrupts for the sensors/actuators. We spent a vast number of hours parsing through documents to try to troubleshoot the coding issues.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The fact that we built this device from the ground up! It was definitely a sprint to the finish and very challenging actually incorporating the whole device, but it works! That is a huge accomplishment for me (Matt) who does not come from a background in electrical engineering or computer science.

What we learned

We learned about all parts of this process, from PCB development, to coding in C, to full device assembly. It was a very informative and challenging experience.

What's next for Jabba Feeder (Hungry Hungry Chameleon)

Our next step would be to release Jabba Feeder v2.0 which would provide for haptic motor functionality and scheduled feeding. By incorporating both of these, we can offer our users faster feeding times and regularly scheduled feeding for the animal. One that is incorporated, we hope to scale our project to ensure that chameleons stay well fed.

Built With

• altium
• microchip