I'm working on making a actual frozen food auto feeder!

[randomfishdude]

Hey all!
I've decided to put my engineering brain to work on building a working, producible frozen food auto feeder.
I know there have been some companies or just a company that has tried but did not release it. I don't have anything to loose so why not try!
people have made DIY versions so why not make some sort of smaller thing like that.

On to the real thing.
Last night I was doing some "research" and I saw this video where this dude who took a CPU cooler then made a small Styrofoam box. put them together with a little heatsink on the inside and it cooled the drinks off pretty quick.
so I took a little CPU cooler and a heatsink and cut a hole into my old Ai Nero 3 box. then took a fan from a USB laptop cooler and put them together. Then once i felt the little heatsink on the inside and verified it was cold i put a room temperature drink on the inside. Now I'm not expecting it to be cold because I'm using a undersized fan on a low profile heatsink and i couldn't find any thermal paste so i had to use hair gel to bridge the connection between the internal and external heatsink. But I left it overnight and the class was colder. I have it running right now so when i get home tomorrow I'm going to see if its even colder. I'm working on the 3d designs. i plant to 3d print it then make it food/reef safe. There is some mixed info on weather some 3d printing minerals are safe. So i plan to seal it off for more durability and ore safe for fish.

But I am basing my design off of this concept. I'm planning to make some deferent versions of it. Some hang on back, some where it uses a pipe to feed it in. Along with some deferent sizes.

I'm also open to suggestions.

 

[Js.Aqua.Project]

Following

 

[tdyrkacz]

how could it get colder than room temp though? All you are doing is moving room temperature air through the box right?

 

[robotrash]

how could it get colder than room temp though? All you are doing is moving room temperature air through the box right?

If I'm not mistaken they work similarly to geothermal/heat pump heating/cooling and can typically be reversed for the opposite affect. I am not super knowledgeable on it but that's what I've gathered, you're dissipating heat faster than it can accumulate causing it to cool.

There are a ton of "makeup/skin care fridges" that are available that use what sounds like the same technique:



My wife has one and it does a pretty good job for not having to deal with coolant/freon.

 

[randomfishdude]

Here is a image of what I am basing it off of. I'll get a image of mine soon.

I huess how I can explain it is it takes the hot air inside the box and transfer that to the heatsink with the fan on it wich dissipates it.

 

[rhitee93]

It's a peltier device. It uses the peltier effect (thermoelectric effect) to move heat from one side of the device to the side with the fan and heatsink. I've never tried to use one to get to below freezing though. No reason I know of that it shouldn't get you there as long as you can provide enough electrical power, and you can suck the heat out of the other side well enough.

 

[Rick's Reviews]

Will be a great idea but soo many problems especially... for one why did company not release this? I'm working on similar concepts but it's costing me a fortune, I'm thinking of selling my ideas for royalties but 3% of an idea.
£4k to make prototype fit for purpose plus £4k to copyright , china will make small adjustments just to steal and copy

Just like you have from getting inspiration from 'others'

It's definitely a great idea and if you can source an item and make it/ improve it in someway you might make a quick buck/pound

Just my thoughts.

 

[randomfishdude]

It's a peltier device. It uses the peltier effect (thermoelectric effect) to move heat from one side of the device to the side with the fan and heatsink. I've never tried to use one to get to below freezing though. No reason I know of that it shouldn't get you there as long as you can provide enough electrical power, and you can suck the heat out of the other side well enough.

It is working really well even without much of a powerfull fan.
I don't think getting it below freezing will be too much of a big problem.

Will be a great idea but soo many problems especially... for one why did company not release this? I'm working on similar concepts but it's costing me a fortune, I'm thinking of selling my ideas for royalties but 3% of an idea.
£4k to make prototype fit for purpose plus £4k to copyright , china will make small adjustments just to steal and copy

Just like you have from getting inspiration from 'others'

It's definitely a great idea and if you can source an item and make it/ improve it in someway you might make a quick buck/pound

Just my thoughts.

I don't know why the company didn't. I didn't look it up but by what I head they were about to start taking orders but then just stopped.
My main plan isn't to bulk produce it right now.
Probobly just scale up production over time if I get to that point.



Here is some images of it right now... I just put a thermometer inside to test air temp so I'll see the temp when I get back home tonight.

 

[randomfishdude]

It's now been almost 2 months since I started this.
I haven't really done much as I've been busy and keep forgetting to order the other stuff I need to continue.
But I finally have orderd the other stuff I need.
I'm hoping to start working on it more this weekend.
After I made the last post I used a bigger fan I had from a old pc and it did start to cool of a little on the inside.
Not much though.

Right now what I'm planning on is to get the base cooler down and get a container of some sort at freezing temp.

Then I will finish work on the rest of the mechanical stuff(case, feeding motor.. etc)

Thinking about if/when I get to the point of when I'm ready to start selling. I might make a few and sell them to pepole for cheap maybe here on r2r. So I can get some feedback on the desighn. What's good what's not good what broke. Basically beta testers.

Once I get all that ironed out I will start to sell the refined product on a small scale.

I don't remember if I said this before (I think I did) but If I can't get it below freezing in a small ,quiet enough manner maybe have it above freezing but below where bacteria and stuff can survive so it dispenses it as a liquid instead of as a block.

 

[littlefoxx]

Hey all!
I've decided to put my engineering brain to work on building a working, producible frozen food auto feeder.
I know there have been some companies or just a company that has tried but did not release it. I don't have anything to loose so why not try!
people have made DIY versions so why not make some sort of smaller thing like that.

On to the real thing.
Last night I was doing some "research" and I saw this video where this dude who took a CPU cooler then made a small Styrofoam box. put them together with a little heatsink on the inside and it cooled the drinks off pretty quick.
so I took a little CPU cooler and a heatsink and cut a hole into my old Ai Nero 3 box. then took a fan from a USB laptop cooler and put them together. Then once i felt the little heatsink on the inside and verified it was cold i put a room temperature drink on the inside. Now I'm not expecting it to be cold because I'm using a undersized fan on a low profile heatsink and i couldn't find any thermal paste so i had to use hair gel to bridge the connection between the internal and external heatsink. But I left it overnight and the class was colder. I have it running right now so when i get home tomorrow I'm going to see if its even colder. I'm working on the 3d designs. i plant to 3d print it then make it food/reef safe. There is some mixed info on weather some 3d printing minerals are safe. So i plan to seal it off for more durability and ore safe for fish.

But I am basing my design off of this concept. I'm planning to make some deferent versions of it. Some hang on back, some where it uses a pipe to feed it in. Along with some deferent sizes.

I'm also open to suggestions.

If you make one, I would so be interested!!

 

[randomfishdude]

If you make one, I would so be interested!!

Glad to hear.
I know alot of pepole would be.
I know some also stopped trying to be so hopefull with somehow a severe lack of autofeeders for sale yet plenty of diy solutions?

 

[randomfishdude]

I got a few of the parts in today.
Waiting on some others tmr.

I'm also working on getting the 3d model together since I have some measurements now.

I'm thinking the thing with hand a little less than halfway over the tank.
Since alot of tanks don't have a whole lot of room against the back wall.
What do yall think?

 

[randomfishdude]

Not pretty or very functional but the base is together.

Currently I have it set up to there wall ac110v goes into the little convert and makes it dc12v at 5a.
That goes to a little thermostat which turns on the peltier when it's hoter than the set tempature. I also have a little 12v fan to wall plug adapter.

This isn't much of a test but if it gets below 15c I would say the peltier is working.
I couldn't figure out how to mount it all in the box tonight but I will try to figure that out tmr. I also need to get some longer wire. Didn't buy any extra so I had to cut a little off the peltier.

I'll figure it out tmr and get a more proper box to fit in in.

 

[randomfishdude]

I need to find some board maybe something like a Pi. Just all I need it to do is a take a simple interface that I will code and put it out to a screen. And whenever it's the set time it will put out power to the motor.

Probobly a step motor so I can keep track of how far it's turned so you can set how many cubes/potions to dispense.

I don't know where to find any like that. Anyone know?

 

[Nano_Man]

@Projects with Sam

 

[randomfishdude]

IT WORKS!!!!!!!!!!!
after a while of fiddling with wire arrangements i finally figured it out.
For some reason my current thermostat is not providing enough power to the peltier for it tk do anything. But by wiring it up directly to the supply I made it work.
I wired the thermostat up separately so I could still get a temp.
It's currently below 0 as it's creating ice.

Tommarow I will try to get some thicker wires for the thermostat so hopefully I can use the thermostat to controll the peltier. But for now this works!

 

[randomfishdude]

I've manages to get it to cool off a few things in the little mini fridge I've made.
Tommarow I'm going to figure out a case desighn. I also have figured out I probobly need to direct some airflow to the power supply as it gets quite hot.

 

[randomfishdude]

Today I managed to get it down to 2.3c (36f) in the new 3dprinted case I made. In still trying to get lower. 36f is low enough to keep the frozen shrimp. It won't be frozen but it also won't start to rot or stink. It would probobly be easier if it was alrety in a liquid state.

I am currently 3d printing a 2nd version of the new case since I found 3 problems with it.

1st. the mounts inside the case for the interior heatsink bere both too tall and broke when I tried to remove the scaffolding.
2nd. I made the extra little slack area too big for the peltier so hot air leaked in a little.
3rd. I didn't print a front piece for it so I had to use Styrofoam.
I don't currently need a bottom one since I have my desk.

I do still need to get thicker wire so I can plug the peltier into the thermostat instead of having it run all the time when the power supply is plugged In.

It is continuing to go down in temp as I write this. So I'll probobly haft to come back and edit it.

 

[Reefering1]

A mini fridge can easily and cheaply keep the food cold, my question is, what's your plan to dispense it? Gravity or some kind of pump? How will you keep valves/ pumps clean long term?

 

[randomfishdude]

A mini fridge can easily and cheaply keep the food cold, my question is, what's your plan to dispense it? Gravity or some kind of pump? How will you keep valves/ pumps clean long term?

It depends.
If I keep them solid in cubes I plan to use almost a conveyor with little dividers that are a bit bigger than the average size cube.
With a V shaped container.

If I go liquid then it will just be something maybe like a dosing pump or something. I feel like if I use a prefer like thing it might get clogged.
And/or a augar like thing.just somehow keep it from flowing out.

But it will sit up on the side of tank so gravity will do a good bit of work.

----

Also the cooler just hit 1.6c / 35f