Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Weekend Projects – Pet Water Warden”.
Hi guys, i’m mike’s an easy executive editor of make magazine, and it seems that most makers have a kind furry friend hanging out in their workshop in this weekend, project we’ll be building the pet water warden by Eloy salinas. It’S designed to monitor your pets, water bowl and keep it topped up. So your little buddy will never go thirsty. Two simple homemade dip probes connected to a micro controller since the water level in the bowl.
If the water level drops too low, the micro controller will automatically activate a valve to refill the bowl from its reservoir. If the reservoir gets too low, it will shut the system down and send you a tweet to let you know it’s time to fill up again. No more thirsty pets, most of the parts for this project can be picked up at your local radioshack check out the project page for complete details. You’Ll also need these tools. This is a moderately difficult build that you should be able to complete in a few hours over the weekend.
The system is based on an Arduino microcontroller, which reads the dip probes, controls the water pump and sends Twitter notifications. When there’s a problem, the dip probes are made from a few simple parts and the main reservoir can be any container that holds a few gallons of water and allows the aquarium pump to sit on the bottom. We’Ll start by prototyping the water sensing circuit on a breadboard following the schematic and layout diagram, which can be found on the project page. The circuit uses three probes to determine the water level in the bowl, and two LEDs help show the status of each probe.
Now that you confirm the circuit is working, you can permanently starter the sensor circuit into the maker ship at this point, you’ll wire, the Arduino to the circuit, so that it can detect the water level in the bowl connect the collector of the low transistor to input A1 and the collector of the high transistor to input a 0, the bull’s base probe will be wired directly to 5 volts on the ship strip, a few inches of insulation off the base sensor wire and attach it to the bottom of any non conductive water bowl. With some Suber, a bit of exposed wire should lie flat on the bottom of the bowl. Next attach the low and high level probes to the side of the bowl, with additional super, keep them clear of the base probe.
So there’s no danger of accidental contact. The water in the bowl completes the circuit between the base probe and the low and high probes, which allows the Arduino to assess the water level. Now we need to prepare the water reservoir start by cutting a hole in the top of the water reservoir container.
Just big enough for the aquarium pump to fit next connect a length of hose to the pump and fasten the pump to the bottom of the reservoir. Most aquarium pumps have little suction cups, which work perfectly for securing the pump to the base, then run the hose to the water dish and secure it in place. The last step is to puncture a small hole in the hose to prevent the pump from initiating a siphon when the water level is higher than the bowl. A small enough hole won’t interfere with the flow while pumping, but it will be enough to allow air into the hose and prevent a messy overview. The only spills you’ll have to worry about will come from your dog. Now we need to program the Arduino microcontroller.
You can download the source code from the link found on the project page. You will also need to install the tweet library for Arduino and get an OAuth token. The project page has all the code and links to get you up and running quickly. Once you add your OAuth and network information to the code, upload it to your Arduino, the last step is to wire up the power switch tail which will allow the Arduino to control the pump connect a wire between the negative terminal on the power switch in the Arduino, ground pin and another wire between the positive terminal and Arduino pin 8. We use a power switch tail because it’s the easiest and safest way to control high voltage, never use the Arduino connected directly to mains voltage. First of all, it just won’t work, but also it’s dangerous and you could seriously hurt yourself now you can plug the maker shield into the Arduino, then plug the ethernet shield into the maker shield, plug your aquarium pump to the power switch tail double check. All the probe and pump connections then power it up. The program checks the pets bowl for water every 10 seconds. The Arduino turns on the pump and fills the dog bowl. The hide dip sensor is active, indicating the bowl is full when the Arduino starts filling the bowl. It also starts a timer if the bowl isn’t full within a reasonable time. It assumes the reservoir is empty and it shuts the system down to keep the pump from burning out and sends a tweak to your account, letting you know that your furry friend is thirsty. Now your furry friends can rest easy. Knowing the pet water warden is on duty, we don’t recommend that you rely solely on this project for the well-being of your pet, but it certainly will help with your day-to-day chores and who doesn’t love a water bowl that can tweet there’s plenty of room on the Arduino to add additional sensors, how about checking the weight of the food dish, the ambient light or the temperature in the room? The possibilities are endless. If you build your own pet water, warden share it with us on the project. Page .