Published March 12, 2018 © GPL3+

Lane Tech HS - PCL - Automated Food Dispenser

This project was part of the Lane Tech HS Physical Computing Lab course. I created this project as part of the Home Automation/IoT project.

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Lane Tech HS - PCL - Automated Food Dispenser

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Particle Photon

Adafruit Small Reduction Stepper Motor - 5VDC 32-Step 1/16 Gearing

Solderless Breadboard Full Size

Texas Instruments Dual H-Bridge motor drivers L293D

Adafruit Square Force-Sensitive Resistor (FSR) - Interlink 406

Jumper wires (generic)

Software apps and online services

Blynk

Story

This project came about because I wanted to be able to feed my dog while I wasn't home. Using an old cereal container was the perfect vessel to automate a dog feeder. The device simply replaces the hand crank with a stepper motor to turn the silicon butterfly gear instead of having to do it manually. The best part is that it can be controlled by my smartphone via the Blynk app. I figured that I would probably not be the best judge of when my dog was going to be hungry so I decided to add a force pad so that my four-legged friend could feed himself.

The Idea would be that the force sensor would be set on a delay of an hour, so he wouldn't over-serve himself. The force pad would tell the photon to turn the stepper motor a predetermined number of rotations so that the right amount of food would come out, the same that would happen when triggered from my smartphone. After the device was assembled I tested it and had to change the scope of the project. The stepper motor could not apply enough torque to allow the gear to turn with the bulky dog food. Further testing with cereal and granola determined that this particular set-up works best with small, granular foods. The pressure pad turned into a back up to using a smartphone. If I didn't have my smartphone I could still tap the pad to make the machine serve me a bowl of cereal.

1 / 3

This project would probably benefit from a larger stepper motor for larger food items but as-is, this project works great for small food dispensary!

Code

#define BLYNK_PRINT Serial// This #include statement was automatically added by the Particle IDE.
#include <blynk.h>

// This #include statement was automatically added by the Particle IDE.
#include <Stepper.h>



//#include <Stepper.h>
 char auth[] = "b6e6d2da0de14ea48f4d1070c99384d2";
 
const int stepsPerRevolution = 512;  // change this to fit the number of steps per revolution
                                     // for your motor
int pressurePad=D2;
int LED=D1;
int pressure;
 
// initialize the stepper library on pins 8 through 11:
Stepper myStepper(stepsPerRevolution, 3,4,5,6);      

 
    void setup() {
  // set the speed at 60 rpm:
     myStepper.setSpeed(3);
  // initialize the serial port:
  //Serial.begin(9600);

    pinMode(pressurePad, INPUT);
  pinMode(LED, OUTPUT);
  Blynk.begin(auth);
  Serial.begin(9600);
      Serial.println("Start");
    }
 
 
void loop() {
    
    //digitalWrite(LED, HIGH);
    
    Serial.println("light on");
    
    Blynk.run();

    pressure= digitalRead(pressurePad);
  Serial.println(pressure);
  
      if(pressure== HIGH)
    {
        digitalWrite(LED, HIGH);
         // step one revolution  in one direction:
   //Serial.println("clockwise");
   myStepper.step(stepsPerRevolution);
       // delay(500);
    }
        else
        {
            digitalWrite(LED, LOW);
        }
    
    
}

BLYNK_WRITE(V1) {
    if (param.asInt() == 1) { // On button down...
    
    Serial.println("Blynk Recieved");
            digitalWrite(LED, HIGH);
         // step one revolution  in one direction:
   //Serial.println("clockwise");
   myStepper.step(stepsPerRevolution);
       // delay(500);
        // Tweeting!
        // Note:
        //   We allow 1 tweet per minute for now.
        //   Twitter doesn't allow identical subsequent messages.
       // Blynk.tweet("My Particle project is tweeting using @blynk_app and it’s awesome!\n @Particle #IoT #blynk");

        // Pushing notification to the app!
        // Note:
        //   We allow 1 notification per minute for now.
        //Blynk.notify("You pressed the button and I know it ;)");
    }
}
  // step one revolution  in one direction:
  // Serial.println("clockwise");
  //myStepper.step(stepsPerRevolution);
 // delay(500);
 
   // step one revolution in the other direction:
//  Serial.println("counterclockwise");
  //myStepper.step(-stepsPerRevolution);
  //delay(500);

#include <Stepper.h>
 
const int stepsPerRevolution = 512;  // change this to fit the number of steps per revolution
                                     // for your motor
 
// initialize the stepper library on pins 8 through 11:
Stepper myStepper(stepsPerRevolution, 8,9,10,11);            
 
void setup() {
  // set the speed at 60 rpm:
  myStepper.setSpeed(10);
  // initialize the serial port:
  Serial.begin(9600);
}
 
void loop() {
  // step one revolution  in one direction:
   Serial.println("clockwise");
  myStepper.step(stepsPerRevolution);
  delay(500);
 
   // step one revolution in the other direction:
  Serial.println("counterclockwise");
  myStepper.step(-stepsPerRevolution);
  delay(500);
}