Project: Demand auto fish feeder with overfeeding limits

BullwinkleII

Oh cool.

Thanks Steve S

I was trying to get around the no decimals thing with what I was doing.

That's much better. (if I've understood it properly - I'm yet to actually put it into practice

That's the first code I've had to read of someone else's. It really hard to read stuff you haven't written yourself. I had no Idea.

Keep it coming

BullwinkleII

Steve s

I dont follow the solve for the extra flashes. No doubt this is just me.

I dropped your code into the project to replace mine.

It's much better.

10 feeds report the same as 11 feeds.

Should I just create an exception to the maths?

ie something like ...

if 10 then do this totally different thing, then go back to the maths?

Seems a bit clumsy and wont cope with the same error at 20 and 30 if anyone goes there

Sorry if you already covered this, but I struggle with the language still

BullwinkleII

Steve s / everybody else that knows stuff

If you can solve the issues around the 9 - 10 - 11 business, can you edit this program, and repost it. I'd really like to understand the solution. I just cant see why it doesnt work.

I've tried very combination of 0's and 9's and 10's, -1's and +1's I can think of and still cant wrap my head around it.

Lots of comments if you are willing, and even an explanation so next time I can do it without having to ask how.

I offer free virtual beer/tea/coffee/water. All you can drink :occasion5:

Hard to resist isnt it?

Code:

'Demand Fish Feeder ver 2011-10-02-0100
'
'--------------------------------------------------
'Code by ...

 'Steve s                backyardaquaponics.com   
''BullwinkleII                backyardaquaponics.com      and     120 thingsin20years.blogspot.com
    

'PVC feeder constuction  by...

'Anyone? Anyone?

'
'-------------------------------------------------

'No rights reserved  <-------  read that bit again before you contribute 
'for unrestricted use by the universe and everyone in it, regardless of gender, race,  creed , colour or consistancy 

'Demand fishfeeder with over feeding protection and stacks of other cool stuff
'written on LinAXEpad via Ubuntu  
'----------------------------------------------------

'PICAXE 08M   (or not - I'm guessing this is going to outgrow the 08M)
'uses 117 of 256 bytes  (so far)

'-------------------About-------------------------
'program feeds fish via a switch in the water that the fish press 
'activating a 36 rpm geared motor and screw, fed by a hopper of fish feed. - TODO

'fish are restricted to a certain number of feeds per day, - TODO

'and are forced to wait a certain time between feeds -TODO


'fish are notified of food being availible via a LED near the switch - DONE

'humans are notified indicating feeds so far 
            'Flashing light showing ...  long long short short short = 23 - A BIT DONE
            'or perhaps oneday by LCD screen - TODO
            'or both - TODO
'---------------------------------------------------
                            
'------------------Variables-------------------------------------------------
         
symbol FeedAmount=b0      'stores the dose size of food per lever press      
symbol MaxFeeds =b1            'stores the maximum number of feeds per day
symbol TwelveHours =w2         'stores an approximate 24 hour period in "WAIT"s or "SLEEP"s between resets of feed alowance 
symbol NoFeedWait  = w3         'sets the length of time fish must wait between feeds so they dont eat it all at once
symbol IsFeedOK = b4            'Yes or no - 0 = no dose allowed, 1 = 1 dose allowed
Symbol LeverState = b5        'not pressed = 0, pressed = 1
symbol FeedsSoFar = b6                  'stores thenumber of feeds they have successfully recieved 
symbol ElapsedTime = b7               'stores the elepsed time since the last 12 hourly reset

'----Reusable temp variables that only persist within their subroutine----overwrite at will within subroutines---------------

symbol Temp0 = b10
symbol Temp1 = b11
symbol Temp2 =b12
Symbol Temp3 = b13

'--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'=============================================================

Main:      

   gosub Init
   
'------------------------ ongoing program loop -------------------------------

   Continue:          
      
                 'check to see if SimulateOneFullDay button is pressed
      'check to see if "change NoFeedWait limit" button has been pressed
      'check to see if " change number of feeds button is pressed
      'check to see if change feed size button has been pressed

      gosub CheckForLeverPress
      gosub FlashFeedsSoFar
   
   goto Continue
'------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
end

'--------------------------'here lies everything adjustable -------------------------
                                       
                     Init:   'run once at start up
                     {
                             
                        low 2
                        high 1
                        let FeedAmount = 100         'readadc #   would be better set via screw pot to allow in field adjustments
                        let MaxFeeds =  10                'readadc #  would be better set via screw pot
   
                        let TwelveHours =  100         'debug only    '43200   <-----should really be this number of seconds 
 
                        Let NoFeedWait = TwelveHours/MaxFeeds      'break the day into equal forced wait portions    
       '
                        let IsFeedOK = 1            'set initial state to allow 1 dose of feed
                        let FeedsSoFar = 9                  'used at reset after each 12 hours
                        let ElapsedTime = 0          'used at reset after each 12 hours
                     return
                     }


'-----------------------------------------
CheckForLeverPress:
{
   
   if pin3 =1 then  gosub FeedNow       'if the lever is pressed go and feed them

   return
}

'-----------------------------------------

FeedNow:
{
   
   if  IsFeedOK = 0 then return                 'bail out of subroutine if fish are not alowed to feed for whichever reason 
   end if
   
   high 2                        'turn on the green light (this would be the motor in the real version)
   pause 500                                                  'leave it on for 1/2 a second  
   low  2                          'turn off the green light

   pin3 = 0                          'I think this resets the switch but I'm not sure if its needed
   let leverstate = 0                    'not yet used
   FeedsSoFar = FeedsSoFar + 1               'add 1 to the tally of feeds since the last reset


'this pause and red light's update needs to be moved so other things can contine in the background

   low 1                           'turn off the red light telling fish the cant feed
   pause 5000                                            'wait for the length of time we force them to wait 
   high 1                         'Turn the red light back on telling them the lever is active
     
return
}


'-------------------------------------------

FlashFeedsSoFar:
{

   pause 400


   Temp2=FeedsSoFar/10                 'isolate tens
   Temp3=FeedsSoFar//10                'isolate remainder 

   for Temp0=1 to Temp2           'flash tens
      if Temp2=0 then remainder 
      high 4                   'LED on
      pause 600
      low 4                    'LED off
      pause 200
   next Temp0

   pause 200


'--------------------------------------------------
remainder:
{
   for Temp0=1 to Temp3           'flash units
      high 4
      pause 200
      low 4
      pause 200
   next Temp0

return
}

Steve S

Quote:

10 feeds report the same as 11 feeds.

Should have thought of it, 10 / 10 = 1 (dash) and you get 0 in remainder and that zero counts so you have to sidestep it.
There may be a more elegant way to deal with it but that’s how I worked it out.

Code:

remainder:

for b0=1 to b3           'flash units
if b3=0 then noflash
high 1
pause 200
low 1
pause 200
next b0

noflash:

;retun:

BW, I just ignore any symbolized program, most of the time the symbols are rather cryptic with no meaning evident
and you don’t know if it’s a pin or variable and if there are too many of them it doesn’t make sens anyway.

Only if really needing to find out how something works that I would spend a day
translating somebody’s symbolized program when getting stuck in a project.
So I won’t be of much help.

Also you will get better help from the many pros on the other forum and some of the younger generation
do use a full page of symbols for as much of code.

natmaka

FlashFeedsSoFar:
{

pause 400

Temp2=FeedsSoFar/10 'isolate tens

'TODO: Temp2 must be >=0, or raise an error/exception
'TODO: Temp2 must be an integer. Maybe use some "Temp2=int(FeedsSoFar/10)" form?
'TODO: the integer must be properly rounded

Temp3=FeedsSoFar//10 'isolate remainder
'TODO: same here, better obtain a properly rounded integer

for Temp0=1 to Temp2 'flash tens

if Temp2=0 then remainder

'TODO: this is not OK, as if Temp2=0 then remainder will be executed then return... then the lines below will be executed

high 4 'LED on
pause 600
low 4 'LED off
pause 200
next Temp0

pause 200

replace it with something along those lines:
for Temp0=1 to Temp2 'flash tens
high 4 'LED on
pause 600
low 4 'LED off
pause 200
next Temp0

pause 200

remainder , calling for the reminder

,TODO: better pass arguments than use global variables, leading to something like

remainder(Temp3)

Here is the problem solved in Perl:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
#use diagnostics;

sub showDeci($) {
  my $targetValue = shift;

  if ( $targetValue<0 ){
# Cannot grok a negative value
    return -1;
}
  my $tens = int($targetValue/10);
  my $units = $targetValue%10;

  print "$targetValue: ";

  #print "($tens , $units) ";

  for (my $i=0; $i<$tens; $i++) {
    print 'O';
  }

  for (my $i=0; $i<$units; $i++) {
    print 'o';
  }

  print "\n";
  return 0;
}

showDeci(0);
showDeci(1);
showDeci(2);
showDeci(3);
showDeci(10);
showDeci(11);
showDeci(12);
showDeci(23);
showDeci(99);

A test run shows:

Quote:

0:
1: o
2: oo
3: ooo
10: O
11: Oo
12: Ooo
17: Oooooooo
23: OOooo
99: OOOOOOOOOooooooooo

BullwinkleII

Steve S wrote:

Only if really needing to find out how something works that I would spend a day
translating somebody’s symbolized program when getting stuck in a project.
So I won’t be of much help.

Also you will get better help from the many pros on the other forum and some of the younger generation
do use a full page of symbols for as much of code.

Thanks Steve, that code (of course) did the trick.

I really want to see if I can make this thing happen as part of this community. As a community project. But even if I cant, I enjoy giving this community stuff for free

I do actually get help from the PICAXE forum and from ozelecforum

That's where I learnt what little I know. I'm always asking them for help

More than anything I want to put the process down in this thread so people can see that it's really not that hard, and that you can do this stuff even if you don't happen to be a rocket scientist, and even if you don't actually know how to program, and don't know about electronics.

That's why I'm using all the symbols. So that people who might be interested, but are as yet unfamiliar with programming, might be able to follow what's going on within the code.

BullwinkleII

I've just started work on the physical object, ie. the PVC bits.

So far I'e got a vague outline that will have to backed up with some tests.

I'm thinking a section of 40mm pvc with end caps and two large holes in the bottom of the pipe if it was lying down.

One hole at each end. The holes would be to let the feed out, from the bottom rather than the ends to keep water out.

I could take an additional, shorter section of pipe, and split it down its length on one side. This would allow it to fit over the original length, and thus slide from one end to the other to block the unused hole. The unused hole would be for simulating a dump of an entire days food out of the back of the device, so you could check your settings, and then just recycle the feed. Generally, this hole would be left closed.

There would be a hole drilled at the fish tank end to fit a small bearing to take the end of a large wood drill bit from an old hand drill.

The bearing at the non FT end would be the motor. An additional section of PVC or perhaps a high pressure end cap would cover and water proof any small section of motor left sticking out the back.

This section or end cap could also cover any switches, and could have holes drilled in it to allow indicator lights to be seen.

At the top in the centre of the pipe, would be a hole cut to the size of a softdrink bottle. I would cut the neck of a bottle and silicone it in place. Then to add feed you would fill a second bottle, and upend it into the perfect fit funnel created by the cut off neck of the first bottle.

All this gets clamped or bolted to your system as required.

It should be water proof (ish), self contained with either batteries or a recessed power jack for an old mobile phone charger or similar.

BullwinkleII

for anyone interested and that was as baffled as me...

from natmaka's code...

if ( $targetValue<0 ){
# Cannot grok a negative value
return -1;

from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok
-----------------------------
To grok is to intimately and completely share the same reality or line of thinking with another physical or conceptual entity
-----------------------------

BullwinkleII

I'm working on time

ie working on the bits in the code that deal with a day or whatever time between resets of the allowed feed amounts.

There are some issues I'm facing with time because the chip I have doesn't have a clock that actually knows what time it is.

One way to deal with this might be just to count seconds, but each time I take time out from counting seconds, say to update how many feeds they have had, or report those feeds, or check to see if they are pressing the lever, its some tiny time away from counting seconds. This means that its next to impossible to count a day accurately.

You following this?

I can get a better chip that has a real time clock, but it occures to me that a better way to go, night be to reset the thing at dawn, when the light changes.

This might be more in keeping with what the fish want rather than what humans want. Fish learn what time it is, but I'm not convinced they actually want to

In real world fishing (as opposed to backyard fishing) dawn and dusk are often active feeding times. So to get away from the fact that a day might end up being 24.2 hours long or something, I could just reset the device every dawn based on light levels.

There might be a few errors if a police helicopter shines it's spotlight into your garden or something, but other than that I think it's probably a reasonably easy thing to set up. In the event of an error in the middle of the night, the system could still be made to reset at dawn because I would be comparing an average light amount over the last hour or something. If a helicopter shines a spotlight into your backyard, the would still be restricted to the normal "you cant have any more feed until you wait x number of minutes, so they wouldnt be overfed.

I intend to have a maximum number of feeds the fish can trigger in a day. I would reset that number regardless of the fish having all that days feed or not. This way we are feeding to the filter's capacity rather than the fish's appetite.

so the questions are...

Do you (everyone reading this) think resetting the number of feeds allowed at dawn, based on light levels, would be a good way to go?

Would this be a feature or a compromise?

Or should I just add a realtime chip or use the next model chip up that actually knows what time it is, and reset each day based on actual time of day

BullwinkleII

only a few small changes and fixes...

the number of feeds for the day interrupts the red light on the lever and turns it off for a few seconds while the "report feeds for the day" flashes, and the lever interrupts the waiting a bit better.

latest version looks like this...

Code:

'Demand Fish Feeder ver 2011-10-04-0500
'
'--------------------------------------------------
'Code by ...

'Steve s                         backyardaquaponics.com   
''BullwinkleII                backyardaquaponics.com      and     120 thingsin20years.blogspot.com
    
'With much appreciated help from the good people at...

'http://backyardaquaponics.com
'http://ozelecforum.com/
'http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/forum.php

'PVC feeder construction  by...

'Anyone? Anyone?

'
'-------------------------------------------------

'No rights reserved  <-------  read that bit again before you contribute 
'for unrestricted use by the universe and everyone in it, regardless of gender, race,  creed , 'colour, species, or consistency 

'Demand fishfeeder with over feeding protection and stacks of other cool stuff
'written on LinAXEpad via Ubuntu  
'----------------------------------------------------

'PICAXE 08M   (or not - I'm guessing this is going to outgrow the 08M)
'uses 145 of 256 bytes  (so far)

'-------------------About-------------------------
'program feeds fish via a lever in the water that the fish press 
'activating a 36 rpm geared motor and screw, fed by a hopper of fish feed. - TODO

'fish are restricted to a certain number of feeds per day, - TODO

'and are forced to wait a certain time between feeds -TODO


'fish are notified of food being available via a LED near the switch - DONE

'humans are notified indicating feeds so far 
            'Flashing light showing ...  long long short short short = 23 - Done
            'or perhaps oneday by LCD screen - TODO
            'or both - TODO
'---------------------------------------------------
                            
'------------------Variables-------------------------------------------------
         
symbol FeedAmount=b0      'stores the dose size of food per lever press      
symbol MaxFeeds =b1            'stores the maximum number of feeds per day
symbol TwelveHours =b2         'stores an approximate 24 hour period in "WAIT"s or "SLEEP"s between resets of feed allowance 
symbol NoFeedWait  = b3         'sets the length of time fish must wait between feeds so they don't eat it all at once
symbol IsFeedOK = b4            'Yes or no - 0 = no dose allowed, 1 = 1 dose allowed
Symbol LeverState = b5        'not pressed = 0 - red light on, pressed = 1 - red light off
symbol FeedsSoFar = b6                  'stores the number of feeds they have successfully received 
symbol ElapsedTime = b7               'stores the elapsed time since the last 12 hourly reset
symbol i = b11


'----Reusable temp variables that only persist within their subroutine----overwrite at will within subroutines--------------- 


symbol Temp2 = b12
symbol Temp3 = b13


'--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
'=============================================================

Main:      

   gosub Init   'run once on startup, and then on reset after each x hours (probably 24) or reset at dawn (better for fish?)
   
'------------------------ ongoing program loop -------------------------------

   Continue:          
      
                 'check to see if SimulateOneFullDay button is pressed
      'check to see if "change NoFeedWait limit" button has been pressed
      'check to see if " change number of feeds button is pressed
      'check to see if change feed size button has been pressed
      'check to see if it's dawn - if it is reset the FeedsSoFar count to 0 (maybe???)

'      do ' check for lever press loop

 '          inc ElapsedTime
  '         gosub CheckForLeverPress'xxx
'      loop while ElapsedTime < TwelveHours - ElapsedTime

      for i = 1 to 255
pause 12
         gosub CheckForLeverPress
      next i


      gosub ReportFeedsSoFar
          
   goto Continue
'------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
end

'--------------------------'here lies everything adjustable -------------------------
                                       
                     Init:   'run once at start up
                     {
                             
                        low 2
                        high 1
                        let FeedAmount = 100         'readadc #   would be better set via screw pot to allow in field adjustments
                        let MaxFeeds =  10                 'readadc #  would be better set via screw pot
                        let LeverState = 0                   'Lever not pressed
                        let TwelveHours =  100         'debug only    '43200   <-----should really be this number of seconds 
 
                        Let NoFeedWait = TwelveHours/MaxFeeds      'break the day into equal forced wait portions    
       '
                        let IsFeedOK = 1            'set initial state to allow 1 dose of feed
                        let FeedsSoFar = 9                  'used at reset after each 12 hours
                        let ElapsedTime = 0          'used at reset after each 12 hours
                     return
                     }


'-----------------------------------------
CheckForLeverPress:
{
   
   if pin3 =1 then  gosub FeedNow       'if the lever is pressed go and feed them

   return
}

'-----------------------------------------

FeedNow:
{
   
   if  IsFeedOK = 0 then return                 'bail out of subroutine if fish are not alowed to feed for whichever reason 
   end if
   
   high 2                        'turn on the green light (this would be the motor in the real version)
   pause 500                                                  'leave it on for 1/2 a second  
   low  2                          'turn off the green light

   pin3 = 0                          'I think this resets the switch but I'm not sure if its needed
   let leverstate = 1                    'set LeverState to pressed
   FeedsSoFar = FeedsSoFar + 1               'add 1 to the tally of feeds since the last reset

     gosub ReportFeedsSoFar
'this pause and red light's update needs to be moved so other things can continue in the background

   low 1                           'turn off the red light telling fish they cant feed
   pause 5000                                            'wait for the length of time we force them to wait 
let LeverState = 0                      'debug only this should be elsewhere
   high 1                         'Turn the red light back on telling them the lever is active

return
}


'-------------------------------------------

ReportFeedsSoFar:
{
        low 1 ' turn off the lever light for a sec whilst reporting 
   Temp2=FeedsSoFar/10                 'isolate tens
   'Temp3=FeedsSoFar//10               'isolate remainder 

   for i =1 to Temp2           'flash tens
      if Temp2=0 then remainder 
      high 4                   'LED on
      pause 600
      low 4                    'LED off
      pause 200
   next i

   pause 200



'--------------------------------------------------
remainder:
{
Temp2=FeedsSoFar//10               'isolate remainder 
   for i=1 to Temp2           'flash units
      if Temp2=0 then noflash
      high 4
      pause 200
      low 4
      pause 200
   next i
   noflash:
   
   if LeverState = 0  then high 1 'set the lever light back to its original state - not pressed
   endif
   if LeverState = 1 then low 1 ' set the red light back to it's original state - pressed
   endif

return
}

TCLynx

I think counting the day as dawn to dusk would probably be a good thing. Now it would be really handy later if you could link this chip to a data logger that could keep track of the feeds long term for you but I'm still looking for a such a data logger that can reliably do temperatures.

BullwinkleII

TCLynx wrote:

I think counting the day as dawn to dusk would probably be a good thing. Now it would be really handy later if you could link this chip to a data logger that could keep track of the feeds long term for you but I'm still looking for a such a data logger that can reliably do temperatures.

I figure data logging will be my next project then

I was looking on the PICAXE site the other day and saw a card reader. It might be an easy way to go to just write all the data to a memory card....

looking...

still looking...

http://www.picaxe.com/Circuit-Creator/M ... atalogger/

TCLynx

Card reader, well I suppose for data logging would they manage a card writer?

BullwinkleII

TCLynx wrote:

Card reader, well I suppose for data logging would they manage a card writer?

"The VDrive2 datalogger is a self-contained unit that allows a PICAXE to read and write data placed on USB memory sticks"

BullwinkleII

it costs £17.50 but it would be convenient.

£17.50 is too much for this project as it stands.

I'll work out a cheaper way.

bit if you look here and scroll down you see a circuit diagram and even some example code

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Project: Demand auto fish feeder with overfeeding limits

Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics