It was suggested to me that project would be a good fit for Shop Talk.
This is an auto-jigging machine for ice fishing.
Where I am you can ice fish with two lines in at once. Typically people will use a tip-up for one line, and actively fish another hole while keeping an eye on the tip-up flag (alerting a bite). The idea of an auto-jigger is to have a more convincing lure for your second line.
The concept is pretty simple, a small gear motor turns a cam that a fishing rod holder rides on. Different cams offer a variety of jigging actions. The nice thing about this approach is the "programing" is done mechanically making it accessible to anybody. The motion can be further tuned by adjusting the dial on a small motor controller to vary the speed.
I tried to make the design as DIY friendly as I could. I think you could make one with a limited selection of hand tools.
I'm still tweaking the design and trying to make it more user friendly & functional.
One of the functionality aspects I still need to tackle is a hook setting device, and an alarm/alerting system when a bite is detected.
Here are the files and drawings.
https://grabcad.com/library/ice-fishing-auto-jigging-machine-v1-1
