Week
Sixteen

Applications and Implications Week

What will it do?

It will filter the water from a connected fish tank as well as diluting the tank. It will also have several different sensors built in to keep track of various variables in the tank.

Who’s done what beforehand?

Well, Teddy Warner is working on making a fishtank this semester, and Guillaume Teyssié made a really neat aquaponics system several years ago. I think the difference is that our project is working specifically on a filter that can be attached to different tanks.

What will you design?

We will design the different dividers of the sump. Originally we thought to make the tank ourselves, but we did some reading that suggested that a tank made out of acrylic would be subpar and we don’t have the experience with working with glass to feel comfortable to build something out of that. We will also be designing the different boards that will be reporting back to a motherboard and housings for them. We also feel that it would be best for us to design building mounting systems for both things inside the sump and connect the sump to the tank.

What materials and components will be used? How much will they cost? Where will they come from?

You can look at this Google sheet to see the breakdown of our parts.

What parts and systems will be made and what processes will be used to make them?

We will be making various probes each with its 3D printed casings and holders as well as the overall internal structure for the sump with multiple layers and parts that will be laser cut out of acrylic.

What questions need to be answered and how will the project be evaluated?

We need to still determine the exact design of the internals and how they will be laid out as well as how to display the information. It will be evaluated if it works and does not flood the house or catch fire or break or murder an upsetting number of fish. In all seriousness really a solid way to evaluate our project at this point would be to see if the sensors are getting accurate readings, which can be checked with instuments that we know are accurate. It can also be evaluated by wether the UI is updating with the data that is being gathered. And finnally it would be useful to see if the fish feeder actually moves when it's supposed to.