2015/09/22

WiFi for everything #4 - Fish feeder

Some people have dog, others own cat. I have freshwater aquarium with fish. Sometimes I forget to feed them in the morning, then I leave the house. So, what is the solution?


To resolve the existing problem I bought an automatic fish feeder. There was no need for fancy features. I take care to choose a model with only few electronics because of the modification I wanted to perform on it.

The plan was to replace the original electronic circuit to an other designed by myself, which already supports WiFi connectivity. Therefore, the solution was an online fish feeder, that can be remote controlled through a webpage by any device running an internet browser.

Inside

Original circuit

Pushbutton for immediate feed and a switch for 12/24h period select

The development was based on PIC24FJ64GA002 16-bit microcontroller. As the first step I needed to include my new HTTP Server stack into the new project then I wrote an appropriate HTML+JavaScript code.

Microcontroller

The cheap WiFi module :)

At the first test the old-new feeder worked well, but after a while it stopped responding to HTTP requests. The source of the problem was the speed of this 16-bit microcontroller: Received bytes (UART) from the WiFi module made the Rx buffer to overflow. To fix the error I reduced the UART bitrate from 115200bps to 38400bps.

English and Hungarian language is available as well

Major feature of the implemented HTML code is the continuous fetching of current state of the feeder. This means you can see the actual state "real-time" which is refreshed in every 500ms. Therefore the user is able to click on Feed button only if the feeder is in ready state, and there is no feeding in progress. Otherwise the button is disabled. The logout page and function protect the fish from troll friends :-)


When it will be done I'll present the final form during operation in the next article.

6 comments:

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