DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF AUTOMATIC FISH FEEDING SYSTEM USING MPU6050 ACCELEROMETER/GYROSCOPE SENSOR AND ESP32 MICROCONTROLLER

The automation of aquaculture processes represents a significant step towards increasing
efficiency and sustainability in fish farming. The system’s objective is to optimize feeding times
and quantities, thereby reducing waste and improving fish health and growth rate Fish
production can be greatly increased by dispensing the right amount of feed in accordance with
the fish's demand, however most mechanical fish feeders still struggle to measure the amount of
feed that the fish are actually consuming. Fish feeding according to regulatory frequency results
in feed wastage, which degrades the water's quality and causes illnesses and stress on the fish.
This research developed an innovative automatic fish feeding system that operates based on the
fish movement behavior, utilizing the MPU 6050 accelerometer/gyroscope sensor and ESP32
microcontroller. . The system consists of feed hopper, MPU6050 accelerometer/gyroscope
sensor, ESP32 microcontroller, servo motor and Real Time Clock (RTC module). The
performance evaluation was carried out by comparing the usual manual feeding method and the
developed system based on feed waste. The result of fish growth based on feed consumed in
manual and automatic feeding as well as system efficiency in terms of reducing food wastage
from 34.48% in manual feeding to 18.92% using the developed system shows a significant
control of feed dispensing when compared with the manual feeding. The daily loss per kilogram
of feed is found to be N54.54 and N26.73 for the manual and automatic system respectively.
This could significantly improve the future of fish farming, leading to more environmentally
friendly and economically viable practice.