Automated Fish Refuge
Team Members
James Cooper - ME
Chris Ryan - BME
Overview
The weakly electric knifefish prefers to hide in tight spaces rather than to swim in the open. The fish will attempt to stay within an enclosure if the enclosure is moved. This provides a unique opportunity to study behavior and the control of its unique ribbon fin locomotion. The goal of this project was to build a device that moves a box under computer control for Professor MacIver's lab. During operation, the box can oscillate back and forth in one degree of freedom. Unlike most fish, the ribbon fin allows the knifefish to move forward, backward, up, and down. Our device is manually adjustable (for reliability) so that the angle of oscillation and the angle of the enclosure can be set independently, each by steps of 10 degrees.
Matlab Interface
Control System
Electrical Design
The circuit design and building is minimal for this project. The only necessary circuitry is to connect the unipolar stepper motor with the pic, and connect the RS232 cable to the pic. Please see the pages for the Unipolar Stepper Motor Driver Circuit and the PIC RS232 cable for more information on how they work and how to set them up.
Stepper Motor Circuit
Pin D0 is connected to Clock Pin D1 is connected to DIR
