I have always loved the outdoors. My favorite way to enjoy the outdoors it to hunt. One of my deer feeders that I use for hunting recently broke. Since I am enrolled in an engineering class at a career technical center I decided to fix this broken down feeder for my final project. In this instructable I will teach you how to fix that broken down feeder in a cost effective way and get it back in the woods.

Step 1: Materials

Battery

Soldering materials( Iron,solder,glasses, and helping hands)

Basic feeder components (motor, spinner, and housing space for all of the components)

New arduino circuit board

common sense

Step 2: Disassemble and Clean Feeder Parts

The goal of step 2 is to get familiar with your feeder and how its parts work together, while also taking basic care of the parts that will give the feeder a longer life. To start your project disassemble your feeder. The feeder that used was a Moultrie, but even if yours isnt the same brand it should still have the same basic components.Make sure not to break anything and keep track of all loose components. Once you have fully disassembled your feeder you will need to clean any spots that show wear or corrosion. Another thing that I would advise you to do is to lubricate any moving parts. The feeder in my project needed lubrication on the motor ball bearings. The basic steps you do in the beginning will ensure that you have a quality long lasting feeder.

Step 3: Finding the Problem

After disassembling my feeder I found that my circuit board had been exposed to water and was not working. Even though I had already found my problem I still wanted to run some tests to make sure that the circuit board was the only bad thing.The first test that you should do for your feeder is to test the battery. My battery was not strong enough to run efficiently, but this is a common problem and after plugging another one in I could rule that out as a problem down the road. After that I checked all my other parts just to make sure they were functional. After doing multiple performance test I had concluded that the corroded circuit board was my feeders only problem.

Step 4: Preparing My Parts

To prepare my parts I had to solder a lot of my wires and my MOSFET. The MOSFET was the only salvageable from my old circuit board. Don't feel bad if you don't know what this is, because neither did I before I asked my teacher. The MOSFET basically acts as an on/off switch between the new arduino circuit board and my motor.

After I soldered the MOSFET to its appropriate wires, I then soldered my motor connection wires.After that i finished soldering with my battery wires.

My circuit runs form battery to mosfet/ arduino, to motor, back to battery/arduino.

Step 5: Arduino Coding

The only bad thing about replacing the old circuit board with a new arduino one is that the new circuit board will need code. I wouldn't have ever been able to code the circuit board without the help of my teacher, so I'm not going to expect you too. The code that I have is for the feeder to run 5 seconds every 12 hours. The picture above is a copy of my code for you to use. All you will have to do is go onto the arduino coding app and type this is and download it to your circuit board.

Step 6: Assembling

At this step all of your hard work should be done. I understand that you have added a few new parts, but you should still try to put your feeder back together very similar to how you took it apart. Make sure you check to make sure that no parts are loose. It would also not be a bad idea to go ahead and lubricate moving parts again.

Thank you for viewing my instructable and have a good day.