Raspberry Pi automated fish feeder Fish Food

Whether at work or on vacation, every pet lover worries about how to take care of their little roommates in their absence. What aquarium owners need is an automatic feeder

- Swen Hopfe

Aquarium feeders have been around for a long time, but after my recent research, none of the devices really seemed practical to my mind. Very few devices provide feedback about malfunctions, which could be a nasty surprise when you return home. I created this automatic feeder project for my aquarium for peace of mind.

A Raspberry Pi Zero is a good choice as a control center for a fish feeder: It comes with everything you need to control the mechanical system and to grab images with a Pi cam (Figure 1). It is also compact enough to fit in a small housing. Integrating a Pi Zero W with your wireless home network will allow you to post various captured images online while you are on the road.

The goal was a simple setup that was not prone to errors. Therefore, the mechanical control system only uses one small servomotor. The circuitry of the electronics is just as simple. A DIY control system ensures a certain level of convenience. Two feeders add variety and are quite sufficient to bridge an absence of time equivalent to a three-week vacation.

Getting Started

To get the Zero W up and running, you need to download a new Pi OS image and transfer it to a microSD card. After plugging in a screen and keyboard, you can configure the boot options and network settings. With no need for a desktop later, you can choose automatic login over the command-line interface (CLI) and enable the SSH server and the camera interface. After enabling SSH and with wireless access to your home network, you don’t need to connect any peripherals to the Zero W, and you can access it right away from another computer on the network. All further settings can then be configured in a terminal window on the other computer.