Automated Bird House Feeder

As a part of a class project, the purpose of this project is to explore the process of developing a product from ideation to prototype. The group for this project consisted of 5 mechanical engineering students including myself. We initially explored multiple problems and researched the market for each problem. We decided to expand on the bird house problem upon recommendation of the professor.

We first brainstormed potential ideas of what we could work on and these ideas answered questions from “How can we improve recreational sports?” to “What are ways we can solve problems and inconveniences in our everyday lives?”. We narrowed down our list and used different brainstorming and analysis methods to help us further in expanding our ideas and using that information to narrow down which idea is plausible to do. We used Post-it-note analysis, SWOT Analysis, Design Tree Analysis and Reverse Brainstorming on different ideas on our potential project list.

Our initial designs varied greatly as we iterated the mechanisms and figured out better ways to recycle seeds. As we went through each iteration for the different components that make our part, we kept track of our tasks and actions using a Gantt chart.

In our Design of Experiment process, we attempted to optimize the number of shells removed from the feeding tray. Each trial started with 30 empty shells on the feeding tray and the number of shells that were blown away were counted and recorded (our optimal setting would then correspond to the largest numbers).

Our final design of our automated bird feeder has a timed dispensing mechanism that allows seeds to be dispensed onto the tray at hourly intervals and a fan system that blows away the shells of eaten seeds. We coded an arduino to control these functions.