SMART ECO FEEDER
Dogs picking up trash? Really? 🙂
Unplanned and inadequate waste management represents one of the serious ecological issues in Serbia. Consequence is severe pollution, which affects both humans and animals, especially those living deserted in the streets.
This justifies our idea to create mechanism improving efficiency in problem solving via project ensuring both environmental pollution reduction and improvement of the street dogs’ life.
The idea of the project is to reward the dog bringing garbage with food.
Objective is to provide for the street dogs and to protect the environment by implementing the ITC in education and by raising social and ecological awareness.
The mission of the project is to connect ecological organizations, Ministry of Environmental Protection, PUC Veterina Beograd and primary school, where each party would have its role in achieving the best possible effect. Including community would help develop community feeling.
In order to achieve this objective, we are going to make the „SMART ECO FEEDER“, using digital technologies in education. Students will learn to work in micro:bit, with the special focus on its practical use, solving an everyday issue.
Students role in this Project is to create the feeder and make it operational. It is necessary to make the case of the feeder comprising the food container, funnel, food blocker directly connected with the engine, and food delivery pipe. The servo motor is connected to the micro:bit arranged on the cover of the garbage can, programmed to signal the servo motor to release certain amount of food when the dog drops in garbage in the can. Feeder’s micro:bit is connected via Bluetooth with the micro:bits on the dogs microchipped by the associations for the abandoned animals. Feeder micro:bit registers the dog’s micro:bit in range of less than 10 meters. This ensures avoiding activation of the feeder by other animals or pests.
One more problem is necessary to solve – how to teach a dog to bring the garbage.
Starting from the fact that the dogs are very intelligent animals capable to learn by repeating, some kind of training where they would be taught to bring the garbage to the can and receive the food is required. Repetition and model learning present in dogs would help overcoming the problem.
Part of the activities would need support from the staff of the PUC Veterina Beograd, dealing, inter alia with food provision and microchipping the dogs which would solve a problem of attaching micro:bits on the dogs.
Students participating in the Project will spend high quality free time. They would be engaged on monitoring the food level in the feeder, empty the cans and take care of the hygiene of the food container. They could check if the feeder works properly and conduct necessary repairs.
This feeder was made under the Erasmus+ proSTEMgirls.eu Project in cooperation with the Primary School Radlje ob Dravi from Slovenia and mentor Boštjan Ledinek.
This project would improve students programming skills, help them develop skills and ideas, raise their awareness about environmental protection, and care for other living beings.
Kako deluje program?
Korak 1
Vstavimo blokec ˝on start˝ z smeškonom in določimo skupino Micro:bitov z ˝radio set group˝.
Korak 2
Vstavimo imena naših psov.
Korak 3
Vsem našim 6 psom nastavimo števec (brojač) na 0.
Korak 4
V forever zanko vstavimo rotacijo (roll), če je kot večji od 30 stopinj. To pomeni, da je naš pes prinesel smeti in se bo števec povečal za 1. Nato se bo servo motorček zavrtel za 90 stopinj in psu dal hrano, nato se bo po pavzi zaprl.
Korak 5
Na koncu dodamo še ˝on radio received number˝, da pošlje Micro:bit z psa na drug Micro:bit podatke števca in ime psa, ki je prinesel smeti.
