Electronics
At this point you should have managed to build ZAF's frame and the main hardware components. Let's now give the feeding device a nervous system. We will describe in this section how to connect the different components to control ZAF with the software we developed (described in the last section). The electronic core of the design is based on:
- A Raspberry Pi 3 B+ a credit card size computer.
- A Servo Hat Board to drive PWM outputs, like the pumps and valve.
- Motor Controller to control the DC motors (pumps and valve).
All the pumps and valves connected to the motor drivers are plugged on a 12V and 10A power supply converter . To help stabilise the voltage, and reduce voltage ripples due to the motors turning on and off, we connected 1000uF capacitors in parallel to the motor terminals. The Raspberry Pi, the servo hat and all the electronic connected to the servo hat are running with 5V through the Raspberry Pi power.
You can find a complete description of the electronic setup in the following figure:
