Week 5: April 27, 2016

This week, we finished working on the Arduino. Drawing different schematics and looking online to see how the arduino worked, we realized that we needed a transistor. We drew a couple of schematics to see how the circuit will be able to provide enough power to run the motor which is the ultimate goal. We found that two transistors will be necessary in order to control power to operste the motor in two directions. This is needed in our final design in order to move the rod back and forth when connected to the device, which will in turn open and close the feeder. The final schematic is shown in the picture below.

Figure 8: Schematic of our bread-board Arduino circuit

Because we didn't have the transistors readily available in the innovation studio, the group took a field trip to the ECE parts department located on the second floor of bossone. We got everything we needed there. 

Figure 7: Electrical Engineering parts desk

Along with finalizing the electrical component of our project, we also built the mechanical component of our automatic fish feeder. We created an axial machine using K'NEX pieces to hinge a rod that will extend the length of the tube. When the motor rotates 90 degrees, the rod will move vertically and open the lid to the feeder. Factors to consider was how big we wanted the radius of the sphere to be, which determines the displacement of the rod, and how the rod will not rotate with the motor, but only translate downward. Our final design is shown below. 

Figure 6: Prototype opening mechanism

Next week, we will finalize the design by putting all of our components together. We will also spend the majority of lab writing up the lab manual.