Thinking meat based analogue communication

So...

We used to have this bird named "Spork".

Sometimes he was named "Pogo" because he didnt have enough legs. (he always didnt have enough legs, he just wasnt always called pogo (that sounds suspiciously like something Clevinger (Catch 22) might say)) (and whats with all the nested parenthesis?)))

Anyway...

Spork lived in a sectioned off bit of the house near my desk where I spent most of the day, so we got pretty close. As close as a human that really likes magpies can get to a magpie that almost always hates humans. I say "almost", because if you turned him on his back with his one leg in the air, he would relax so much you could push him around on the floor like a kid playing with a matchbox car. If you tried that when he was upright, hed peck your eyes out in a heartbeat. One of his fast bird heartbeats as well, not some dopey slow human heartbeat. Except Shaan when she offered Spork her (maybe smurf) keyring. Sporked liked Shaan and her keyring.

Anyway... I would whistle "Doo, du do du, and he would instantly reply "Do du do, du dooo do". It was almost as if he could help himself. He had to finish the tune. (I originally taught him the entire tune, but it took the first few notes for him to realise that it was time to sing)

We had to give him up when we had to move back to the flat lands from Cudlee Creek. We also miss all the other creatures we shared our lives with (a goat, an emu, a pig, three sheep, an owl, and various chickens) all still missed terribly.

Anyway... Some nice bird rescue people took in Spork to live with all their other magpies, a magpie loving dog that protected them all from foxes, and a parrot that nobody could understand because it spoke too fast. I suggested it was horse race calling as a result of being pre-owned by a gambler with a radio, and there was a general agreement that that might just be the case.

Really odd sulphur crested cockatoo.

But... it occurred to me that Spork now lived only 30 km away as the crow flies.

Thats only 5 magpie families or so. The other night I found myself trying to teach my local magpies the first (my) half of the tune so they might in turn teach the next groups radiating out from them. I managed to add one extra note to the current call of my local group, but interestingly I managed to get a complete (my half) call from a group further in the distance.

So, so far so good. So, so. You dont see the word "so" followed by the word "so" that much.

And... once I teach the local magpies the first half of the tune and get them to teach the next closets magpies( and so on, and so on), in 5-30 years or so, I hope to hear the second half of the tune (Sporks half) in reply.

Bam!

If so, I expect a Nobel prize for developing very slow, organic, analogue communication, and creating the first "bird meat" based communication protocol that doesnt require tying things to their feet.

120 things in 20 years - So... thats where my life is at.

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Aquaponics The no holes fishtank window

Ive been thinking about adding a viewing window to my fishtank because Im part way through moving and expanding my little system, and now would be a good time.

The new system is going to be a simple CHIFT PIST* with fewer points to go wrong compared to my current system.

The problem with adding a window is that its another point that could fail. The side of the IBC fishtank is flexible, and the glass window is rigid, and that never ends well.

So I thought Id run it through the invention engine and see if there was a safer way.

It came up with something it likes to call the "No Holes Fishtank Window".

Which is nice.



So, it turns out you could probably force an aquarium partially under water from the surface to make an interesting inside-out aquarium.

Its a little reminiscent of Woncos house, "Outside of the asylum".

A better viewing angle would be made from a wedge shaped aquarium made from two squares of glass, and two triangles for sides. One square sits flat against the side of the fish tank (the side you would be leaning against when viewing), and the other sits at an angle of 45 degrees, so that it meets the other square 40cm underwater.

The entire device is mounted on a bracket that keeps it underwater. The bracket is an inverted U shaped bar of stainless steel (stainless steel, so the fishies dont get all dead). One bit of the U is siliconed onto the side of the window, the other end has a locknut to attach it to the frame of your IBC.

It could be easily removed to clean, or to simply add to land fill.

It will probably work, and might look a bit like this...

I might even make one for my boat.

Surprise!

120 Things in 20 years is still alive!



*Constant height in fish tank, pump in sump tank

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Aquaponics Automatic solids removal

So this...

out of the blue

A while ago... What I think is a year in Bullwinklle time... I decided Id not use the invention engine for a year to see if it made any difference to the quality of the stuff I create. I have no real idea if it it has, but Im now officially giving up on the experiment.

It feels a little like Ive had one hemisphere tied behind my back.

So now Ive decided to set two tasks allowing full access to the invention engine process.

1. Get sticking rich.
2. Contribute something to my garden that might be useful to someone else.

The two are in no way connected, and because I have no idea how to get sticking rich, I thought Id start with the aquaponics system, and leave the wealth part for another day.

I suspect leaving getting sticking rich for another day might be a theme in my life.

anyway ...

Ive been playing around with the idea of making a farm to grow escargo for many years. I figured this might by the thing I could put some research into and come up with an idea or two. My ideas put to the engine have all been based around using a bell siphon to flush a grow bed of snail solids by drowning the entire farm...say... once a day, by completely submerging the grazing feed (lettuce etc) in 30cm deep of water to wash away the snails solid waste.

The plan looked something like this...

Picture a 30cm deep BYAP grow bed with 15cm of media, and a 1cm wire mesh stretched across the top. The escargo would live in a cage on top of this grow bed. Planted in the growbed would be green leafy plants that snails liked, and that could survive being eaten from the top once they reached a height of 15cm. Lettuce etc. The plants would grow to 15cm height, then they would be grazed by the snails that would be housed in a cage that sat on top of the lettuce cage.The lettuce would continue to grow, and via some magic that I would figure out with the invention engine, the solids would be rinsed every so often with the rising tide of an auto siphon (or something)

Got it?

It doesnt matter, because thats not what Im going to do.

It turns out that if you read through own threads on forums, you find you made some other promise to make an aquaponics system that removes solids automatically.

Oh well.

Unfortunately for me I think I might have a go at this as a project.

I would like to state at this stage that I think this is an entirely pointless thing to do. I really like the way aquaponics works as an almost closed loop (if you invite your fish food manufacturer into your loop).

The balance is what makes it so appealing.

But that is also what makes it appealing as a task to set the invention engine.

Sorry universe.

So thats it...

How do I make an aquaponics system that removes solids?

Eughhh! (with shaking head)


Ok...


How do I make an aquaponics system, that I dont hate, that removes solids?


I already have some stuff that might be relevant from when I made a swirl filter (somebody eless invention), but made it with a built in autosiphon. The problem with that is it triggers all the time and dumps a lot of water with the solids.

Now that I think of it, I might have already come up with some other useful stuff as well.

Perhaps this test of the invention engine will just prove that I should have paid attention the first time around.

And now I remember the deer scarer.

Perhaps Ive already collected all the bits I need.




120ThingsIn20Years thinks this might be a bad way to come out of semi-retirement (Eughhh!)

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Electronics Motor repair success

I fixed my broken motor that is meant to power the auger via the tiny gearbox that will deliver the fish food in my demand fish feeder.

Normally I prefer less complicated sentences.

But Im all excited.

It turns out, the problem was there were simply too many parts.

Or more accurately one too many parts, and one that was simply in the way.

The silver bit was the one too many. I think that broke off the bit where the wires connect, and fell into the motor, generally clagging things up.





The little nylon washer creates part of the front bearing, but it made getting the brushes back on impossible, because it had to be put on after the brushes. Thats an impossible path through the plastic front. I dont have the kinds of quantum tools that walking through walls requires. And if I did, I wouldnt waste my time with motor repairs. Id do much more interesting stuff, like poking my head through the fridge to see if the light really does go off when the door is closed.

So be leaving out those two small parts, I managed to make my motor work.

Only two parts.

And they were tiny.

Those that know me will realise thats a pretty low number of excess bits after a repair. I think I did quite well.

So well in fact, that it looks like this when its running.

That should do nicely.

What this all means, is that there is really no reason why I cant put this thing together today, and actually finish something.

Maybe.








120 Things in 20 years - If I keep repairing them, one day an electronic motor repair might leave me with enough parts to eventually build another motor. I should fix cars.

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Aquaponics Cooling a fishtank

I found a source of really inexpensive trout fry from my local fly fishing association, but its already half way through the trout season, If I were to buy them, ($30 per 100) Id need a way of cooling my aquaponics system through summer.

A while ago, we had a burst water main in front of our house, and it got me thinking about the possibility of shedding a bit of heat into the water main. Given the foot path is currently dug up, and there are a couple of orange cones alerting people to this fact, it might be possible to run some plastic tubing around the main supply pipe, and pump some of my system water through it.

The temperature of the water and the underground pipe will be roughly the same as the earth around it. If you dig down a few feet. the temperature is much more stable than air temperature in the same location. If you think of a cave, youll see that the temperature is pretty close to the average yearly temperature of the location. This is because stone (dirt) holds a lot more heat than air, so it takes a lot longer for the rock to change temperature because so much "temperature" can be stored within it.

Because the pipes on my side of my water meter are open to the main pipe running down the length of the street, it might even be possible to use the pipes within my property.

Its just a vague thought, but it was in my head, so it had to come out.


120 things in 20 years just thought of something else, but its too naughty to post about.

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Aquaponics External Tomato growing in fishtank

Ive been away for a few days.

It was nice.

One of the best things about aquaponics, is the fact that it takes care of itself. I came home to a system overflowing with produce, and with lettuce that was ready to eat, where when I left, it was nowhere near ready. Its amazing what a few days can do.

Also, not seeing my system for a few days made me realise just how big my tomatoes were getting.

Thats them hanging off the side of the little grow house.

Im calling this experiment a complete success. I had to tie the foliage to the growhouse to support it, because it was starting to pull the roots out of the water.



Theres fruit forming everywhere, and in spite of the late start due to pruning it all back to only a few leaves, I think it will be a good season. Once the capsicum season is over, I think I might just pick up the tomato, and move it back inside for winter.

The tomato grows through a PVC pipe to stop it growing inside the growhouse, and the roots are all just hanging inside the fish tank. There is no media involved, and it relies on the water being oxygenated by the water movement, and the nutrient it gains from the fish.

This has been a lack luster post.

Im sleepy from too much driving.

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Electronics Aquaponics Demand fish feeder software

As far as I know, the software is all working on my demand fish feeder.

Its a bit of a mess, with a few goto statements and a few unused variables. Ill fix it in time, but for now Im going to move onto getting a finished product up and running. As far as I can tell with the software simulator everything works, but the real world might be a completely different story. (the breadboard version also works)








A switch lever extends down into the water. If a light near the lever is lit, the fish can press the lever and feed is delivered. Feed can also be offered with an override button that sets the light on and the feed on if the fish hit the lever (so you can show people how it works)

Dawn detection seems to work. In the end I went with two startup options.

1. A human who holds down the FeedNow override button during startup, then taps out the approximate number of hours since dawn. This skips the code that searches for a new dawn.

2. An abnormal restart with no human. This stops all feeding (there might have been a blackout, and subsequent ammonia buildup) (note to self - add code that flashes some lights to indicate the device is in abnormal start mode so a human can reboot it if they desire). Feeding resumes after night time is detected, and a dawn is detected.

The user can select (via a screwdriver to resist little finger making their own adjustments) ...

 - the feed amount per day in tenths of a second of motor on - from 0 to 65 (Im guessing Ill use 1/2 a second per feed event) The motor turns an auger under a hopper full of feed. So there is another adjustment available

- The number of feeds in a day that are offered (0 - 255 per day)

- The level of light at which dawn is detected. This allows for a system built in the glow of a streetlight or whatever. At dawn each day, all the numbers reset. This is a bit of a problem as far as reading how many feeds were delivered in a day, but for now Ill leave it as it is. My fish feed like crazy at dawn, so I want to give them the greatest opportunity to feed. Eventually Ill add a data logger, so it wont matter when it resets.


The system reports...

- the number of hours since dawn

- the number of feeds since dawn

- The number of false hits to the feed lever when the FeedIsAvailableLED is NOT lit (these will go down to near zero once the fish learn they can only get food when the light is on)


I ran out of feed a while back, and have been feeding my two big silvers on duckweed, lettuce, and worms, so I will need some pellet food before I can test it in the real world. (I still have the PVC device from the first version).

Ill also need a motor as my original one is no longer with us.

The feeding regimen isnt very intelligent at the moment, but Ill do a bit of research, and add some code that tries to deliver the maximum amount of feed in a day that the system can handle. This will probably involve allowing 3/4 of the feed to be dumped at will, with the rest being spaced out over the day ... or something. I havent given it enough thought because I dont really know what the fish need. My experience in fishing for wild fish indicates that the feeding pattern is far from a constant grazing all day long. Ill work it out.

But...

Its going to work. In fact, it already does.


120 Things in 20 years Thats all. Just 120 Things in 20 years.

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