Final Project

Concept

The final project concept I wanted to explore is an automated fish tank. It would make taking care of fish more simple and less hands on. The tank would have the following features: 1. A water filter 2. Custom 3-D printed decorations 3. The tank itself(made of acrylic)

Click here to go to a wikihow for the filter.

Progress July 3rd, 2019

Today I started work on my automatic feeder prototype. I set up a servo motor that will later spin a small bottle of food 180 degrees every twelve hours. I also found Arduino code that would do this, but in order to do a few test I changed the numbers so the servo would turn more often.

Lab Week July 8th-12th

During this week we were tasked with making the first prototype for our final projects. As this was an assignment in and of itself you can click below to see the page for that week.

Click here to go to the prototype page.

Lab July 17th

Today during some extra time I had during lab I created a sketch for some decorations I wanted to put in my tank. This decorations would preferably be 3D printed, but due to how large they would have to be this might not be possible.

Progress July 24, 2019

Today some items I ordered off amazon came in the mail. These items included Zeolite(which I am using as my filter media), fish food, and water conditioner. The first thing I did was to fill my filter cannister with some of the zeolite and making sure that none of it entered the main central tube. Next I wanted to test that the fish food I had would fall out of my feeder when the cap as turned 180 degrees, but it seems that the holes are a bit to small. My next steps will be to update my feeder to consist of a larger holding container with bigger holes so that the food can fall through correctly.

Progress July 26, 2019

Not too long ago I ran a test on the small automated fish feeder to see if the fish food I ordered would fall through the holes when the container was turned 180 degrees. Unfortunately the holes proved to be way too small and sparsly distributed for the food pellets to fall through. Today I took a small travel sized shampoo bottle and made it suitable to replace my old feeder container. I marked the bottle with a black sharpie to know where to make the holes. Then I took the smallest bit I could find in the lab and used the electric hand drill to make a couple of holes on one surface of the bottle. I did a few rounds of trying to filter the food pellets through and finally made the right sized holes. Once I was happy with the holes I decided to create a mount for the bottle to fit onto the servo head. Since the bottom of the bottle wasn't flat I used an old laser cut cog that I made earlier this summer as a base. I hot glued the bottle to the cog and then glued the servo head to the other side of the cog. This worked pretty well considering how small the servo is and how heavy/big the bottle is in comparison.

Progress July 31st, 2019

Today I went about the lab searching for a container to hold my arduino uno and servo motor and have the automated feed attached to the outside so that it could hang over the tank. I ended up using a cup I found in the lab and then cut a little hole for my servo. I super glued my servo to the cup and then added some string for extra support. I also added two clothespins to the outside of the cup so it could easily clamp to the edge of my tank.

Lab August 3rd and 4th, 2019

These two days of lab were pretty eventful. I came in knowing that I had to get my tank started, but quickly got distracted with my tank filter. I wasn't extremely happy with the design and it was a prototype after all, so I decided to create a new filter. In principal the new filter works similarly to the old one. It draws in water and then passes it through some sort of filter media and then it goes back out to the tank. The new filter consists of a powerhead, a bottle, and two forms of filter media. The filter will be placed on the side of the tank and close enough to the bottom that a fish could not accidentally swim into it.

Lab August 3rd and 4th, 2019 Part 2

After finishing my improved filter I got started on the tank itself. I found four pieces of acrylic in the lab that were 12 by 24 inches each and about three milimeters thick. Next I drew the dimensions of each piece on the protective film with the intention of a 18 by 8 by 12 tank, because this would produce a five gallon tank which is optimal for beta fish. Then I went to the laser cutter and started cutting the acrylic. This is where thinks went a little sideways. Because there is no way to perfectly align the pieces and cuts the same way all of my sections were a little off in size. I've managed to get it so that each piece corresponds to its matching section(ex. side and side, or front and back) but all together the tank doesn't fit. Also during these two labs I finished my Miami Beach sign.

Lab August 5th-7th, 2019

After measuring my pieces of acrylic and drawing the dimensions all I had left to do was laser cut and assemble. Sounds simple, right? Nope,very wrong. Turns out cutting the same uniform lines on a laser cutter is a lot more difficult then it seems. I had a lot of trouble getting all my acrylic panes to match in size, because the origin can not be set at the exact same point everytime. Because of this my tank is not exactly as big as originally planned. The one thing I was succeded in doing was making my skyline mural on the front pane of acrylic. When I finally decided to give up on getting perfectly matched pieces out of fear of cutting off way too much acrylic, I grabbed some acrylic glue and started to assemble. I let this set for about twenty minutes, and then busted out the silicone sealant. I lined the edges of my tank with the sealant and then left it to dry in another well ventilated room. Thus concludes my tank making adventure.

Final Thoughts

I won't lie and say that a lot of things went wrong with my final project, but I think these small mistakes and hige failures taught me more than my largest successes. My final project is only a representation of my time in this class, but the skills I learned this summer are more important than a perfect final project. To see the final product click the link below.

Click here to go to the final product page.