DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF AUTOMATED FISH FEEDER
Researcher: Terence L. Catulong
Abstract:
In Aquaculture, food and feeding are essential part in fish production and should be economical for a given aquaculture system. Proper feeding management plays an important role to avoid feed wastage in order to gain much out of the investment. An effective device to dispense the feeds with less waste is needed. The existing fish feeder devices nowadays are mostly concerned in feeding fishes in aquariums they do not compensate the growth of the fish over time and do not have the capability to determine water parameters.
This project aimed to answer problems encountered in feeding management. Using microcontroller, sensors and a wireless fidelity (wifi) technology to connect the device to a router thus enables to send data through IP (internet protocol), an RTC module (real time clock) will be responsible to keep the whole system up to date in the absence of electricity.
The project was tested in Lupon School of Fisheries, Lupon, Davao Oriental. It was evaluated by instructors, aquaculture technician, and students. During testing it was found out that it is highly functional. There were defects that led to adjustments and revision of the project. It is recommended that further study to improve the functionality of the developed fish feeder be done.
Keywords: Aquaculture, feeder, microcontroller, sensor, wireless fidelity, RTC (real time clock) module.
