Kinetic Actuator Circuits

This was a big project! And thank goodness for last year's post of the week by Nicholas otherwise I would have been pretty lost. I used Tinkrcad to create my schematics, as they have a nice circuits section on their site. They are missing a few of the components such as a solenoid and the A4988 driver.

a) DC motor with a relay. This one had a tough time with and never got working. I am most surprised by this because I worked with motors last semester in Rita's class. A DC motor connected to a 555 and a TIP122 and had no problems at all. It's interesting to me that adding the Arduino made it so difficult for me.

I tried a few different setups for this. The top one is based on how the motor works with a relay and a 555 chip and the bottom is how Nicholas set up his circuit as far as I can tell. Unfortunately, I was not able to get this circuit to work. I also tried it with the solenoid which did not work either.

b & c) Solenoid/DC motor with TIP122. Second easiest set up of the bunch! I am putting these two together because their circuits are basically the same.

 I had to make the image of the solenoid in PS

Here the Arduino is running the Blink tutorial code to control each circuit. The Arduino is the connection to the input, left most pin, on the 122 through a 220-ohm resistor The middle pin is what outputs the signal/stored energy to the motor/solenoid and the rightmost pin receives the charge from the 9v to then start storing up energy.

d) DC motor with L293D chip. Another DC motor fail for me. I can't remember if we when over this one in class but I tried following the schematic from Nicholas' posts. I think I need more time to familiarize myself with this chip as it seems pretty complicated or at least the wires make it look that way. Unfortunately, I don't understand how this setup actually works, I cannot go into detail on how it is all set up.

 e) Bipolar stepper motor with a A4988 chip. This circuit was a mixed success. I was able to get the motor to make a buzzing noise but it was not getting enough power (my hypothesis) to actually move. Once again I used Nicholas' schematic as the basis of my own circuit. I had to fudge this one a bit since Tinkrcad does not have most of the required parts.

 One thing I was not sure of is whether it matters which wires on the stepper motor plug into the chip? I tried different configurations and as far as I could tell it did not.

In this video, you can hear that the motor is getting something but not enough to actually move it.
I used the code that was supplied by Nicholas which he got from this site: https://howtomechatronics.com/tutorials/arduino/how-to-control-stepper-motor-with-a4988-driver-and-arduino/

const int stepPin = 3; const int dirPin = 4; void setup() { // Sets the two pins as Outputs pinMode(stepPin,OUTPUT); pinMode(dirPin,OUTPUT); } void loop() { digitalWrite(dirPin,HIGH); // Enables the motor to move in a particular direction // Makes 200 pulses for making one full cycle rotation for(int x = 0; x < 200; x++) { digitalWrite(stepPin,HIGH); delayMicroseconds(500); digitalWrite(stepPin,LOW); delayMicroseconds(500); } delay(1000); // One second delay digitalWrite(dirPin,LOW); //Changes the rotations direction // Makes 400 pulses for making two full cycle rotation for(int x = 0; x < 400; x++) { digitalWrite(stepPin,HIGH); delayMicroseconds(500); digitalWrite(stepPin,LOW); delayMicroseconds(500); } delay(1000); }
f) Last but not least the servo motor controlled by the Arduino. The easiest of the bunch!! We don't even need an external power supply as the servo works with the 5v & ground from the Arduino. Just add an output pin for the code and you are ready to go.

I used the Sweep code from the tutorial to control the servo. It's loud but it works!