Troubleshooting

Fortunately, the boxes give us TONS of valuable data to work with that allows us to accurately track behavior. Unfortunately, this means that there are a lot of moving parts and therefore a TON that can go wrong. Here are some of the main problems that we come across when checking the boxes.

Why aren’t the food dispensers working?

• The main reason for these breaks is some sort of clog. To fix, take a pipe cleaner (or some other thin, flexible rod), and poke through the path to the top of the mechanism. After some pushing, you should be able to go through with little to no resistance.
• Another reason for this break is because there is a clog in the rotation wheel that loads the food. To fix, take a screwdriver or some other thin object, and run it through the hole until you meet no resistance. This should fix any clogs.
• Make sure to check if food dropping is consistent after removing the clog.

Why isn’t the water dispenser working?

These have a few issues. One, the solenoid these depend on can break due to growth/buildup. Typically, they will have an audible click when they activate, but not always. To fix dispensing because of this, you will need to check two things:

1. Is the solenoid getting power
2. Is there enough pressure going to the beam-break needle? To fix point 1, David has kindly created a “test light” where plugging it into the same power source the solenoid gets will test if the system is receiving adequate power. If not, this may be the main problem. To fix point 2, all you need is a plunger to push on the syringe to cause water to flow freely. Be careful however, as you don’t want water to burst from the solenoid OR syringe.

Help! All 4 dispensers are failing!

This is usually because of a failure of the Arduino, which is a small microcontroller board behind the feeding mechanism. To restart: Unplug Arduino for 10 seconds Replug Arduino This should fix this problem.