Easter weekend

[Brian Innes]

Are we meeting tonight?  Box44 in calendar, but just checking as is start of Easter weekend

[Chaz Ford]

I'm setting off in a few minutes should be there 7pm. I do believe a thing is happening downstairs too.

[Mark]

Yeah, meeting is on. We are upstairs but come through bar.

--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

[Barker, Paul]

Hi,

Apologies for hijacking a group email.

I was looking for information on the club website, but unfortunately the “are you human” interface was never populated so I was unable to enquire about club or meeting times, so subscribed to the google group.

I have recently started a small animatronics project (say recently, sept 2016), and have been looking for a club in order to pick peoples brains and get ideas for similar projects.

I have an Arduino program and a small circuit to drive two motors, speech and is controlled via blue tooth. The program was coded by a work colleague, who has since left, so I was gong to try and adapt the program to do other things, as he put a number of variables in. Unfortunately, I keep failing at the first hurdle.

I search the web for Arduino users and clubs and found your group.

I was interested to find out when and where you meet and whether I could come along. I have to be honest, I can not bring much to the party, having worked for over 30 years on mechanics and hardly touched electronics, let alone programs, but did dabble with GW Basic many years ago.

I work in Wimborne and live Portland.

 

Is the club open to new members and complete novices. I am looking to get my one animatronics (simple raising object) working and then maybe build upon that. Only used Arduino so far.

 

Look forward to a response.

 

Regards

 

-- 

Paul Barker

Quality Engineer

Cobham Mission Systems

T : +44 (0) 1202 857616

M : +44 (0)7801 496555

paul....@cobham.com

 

Flight Refuelling Limited trading as Cobham Mission Systems, Brook Road, WIMBORNE, Dorset, BH21 2BJ, UK. +44 (0) 1202 882121 www.cobham.com/mission-systems

 

Registered office Brook Road, Wimborne, Dorset BH21 2BJ. Registered in England and Wales, company number 293529.

 

Please consider the environment before printing this email

 

From: bournemouth-re...@googlegroups.com [mailto:bournemouth-re...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Brian Innes
Sent: 13 April 2017 18:11
To: Make Bournemouth Forum
Subject: [MakeBmth] Easter weekend

 

** The Sender is from outside the ERoW Datacentre organisation **

Are we meeting tonight?  Box44 in calendar, but just checking as is start of Easter weekend

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[Mark]

Hi Paul,

The animatronics project sounds interesting! Come along, bring what you have and we will see if we can help.

We meet on the 2nd and 4th Thursday evening of every month (18:30-21:00) @ Box44 in Bmth. See the meeting page for details. The next meeting will be Thursday 27th.

Meetings are informal and open to anyone. We generally discuss the current projects and anything else we think might be of interest to the group.

Regards,

Mark

P.s. Sorry about the captcha on the contact form, I'll add fixing it to the todo list!

[Mark]

Hi Paul,

When you get a chance, post your Arduino code and we can have a look at it before the next meeting.

Cheers,

Mark

[Barker, Paul]

Hi, been to a few meetings and managed to get a few answers, but still struggling :_)

Spent a little bit of time on program and found the three timers that control the motors, although have not yet managed to understand what the rest does, so reluctant to make any changes.

The way the program is currently set, the command is received via Bluetooth to run program 1 thro 8, which ever is selected. All the programs have the same motor run up time, motor run down time and speech delay time. I was looking to try and introduce sub program so I could possibly have for example , sub routine 1, motor up 6 secs, voice delay 5 secs, motor down 6 secs, whereas sub routine will have motor up, 0 secs, voice delay 15secs and motor down 6 secs. The motor up and down will always be the same.

 

I did try and introduce another pin to drive a 3^rd motor, but this failed!

 

My intention is to learn what is going on with this program, simplify it, try and reduce the size of the control board and have more options to control.

 

Attach copies of program, schematic and picture of current fit.

 

Any guidance ideas (although simple explanations as electronics and programs still confuse me!) gratefully received.

 

-- 

Paul Barker

Quality Engineer

Cobham Mission Systems

T : +44 (0) 1202 857616

M : +44 (0)7801 496555

paul....@cobham.com

 

Flight Refuelling Limited trading as Cobham Mission Systems, Brook Road, WIMBORNE, Dorset, BH21 2BJ, UK. +44 (0) 1202 882121 www.cobham.com/mission-systems

 

Registered office Brook Road, Wimborne, Dorset BH21 2BJ. Registered in England and Wales, company number 293529.

 

Please consider the environment before printing this email

 

[Mark]

I've had a look at the circuit diagram and I think there are a few places you could simplify things.

The 3.3v tx buffer and 3.3v PSU could be replaced with a single 1k resistor (or two if you want to make it a voltage divider).

I would also suggest using a solid state motor driver like the DRV8833: https://www.pololu.com/product/2130/ to replace the relays. It would allow you to independently control two DC motors and also control the speed.

Each motor requires two pins (one of which should be able to do PWM if doing speed control).

They can be found on ebay for not much money. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1PCS-DRV8833-2-Channel-DC-Motor-Driver-Module-for-Arduino-NEW-/191907672540?hash=item2cae96b1dc:g:GPkAAOSwukdXcR-V

I'll have a proper look at the code when I get time.

Would also be happy to help design a PCB for it. Thinking about it, Ed mentioned that he wanted me to do another tutorial on KiCad (PCB design software) at the next meetup, so we could do a first pass at this on the night.

[Barker, Paul]

Hi,

Looked at the motor controller, was wondering how it would cope with a 12V motor as I was thinking about upping the 6v motor to 12V, as the 6’s were struggling with the lift.

Happy for help on PCB, tutorials sound great and the way to go.

Had a go at amending the program to create independent sub programs driven by the Bluetooth selection, but this failed miserably.

Thank god for the save button.

Cheers

[Mark Benson]

That motor driver can only go to 10.8v so you would need to look at a
different one if you want to run 12v motors.

Maybe this: https://www.pololu.com/product/2137

Though they are not as readily available (on ebay) and are a bit more
expensive.

On 2017-06-06 07:33, Barker, Paul wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Looked at the motor controller, was wondering how it would cope with a
> 12V motor as I was thinking about upping the 6v motor to 12V, as the
> 6’s were struggling with the lift.
>
> Happy for help on PCB, tutorials sound great and the way to go.
>
> Had a go at amending the program to create independent sub programs
> driven by the Bluetooth selection, but this failed miserably.
>
> Thank god for the save button.
>
> Cheers
>
> --
>

> PAUL BARKER
>

[Mark]

Looks like a few people won't be able to make it tonight so I'm going to defer the PCB tutorial.

[derek higbee]

Hi Mark

A friend and I who both work with The Engineer club at Ringwood Junior School would like to attend the PCB tutorial, presumable this is with Kcad.

We both need to sort out the basics.

Regards

Derek Higbee

PS I have tried since your earlier tutorial but need more help.

Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. --

[Mark Benson]

Hi Derek,

Sorry for the slow response, I was away last week.

If there is enough interest this week, then we can look at KiCad. Let me
know via this thread.

Also Paul, I've just seen this stepper driver from cool components:
https://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/en/motor-driver-dual-tb6612fng-with-headers.html

Its reasonably priced, uk stock and will go to 15V @ 1.5A, driving two
DC motors independently with speed control.

[derek higbee]

Hi Mark


I have 2 may be 3 wanting to learn Kcad and able to come this thursday
at st michael road box 44 what time?

regards

derek

On 20/06/2017 11:01,

[derek higbee]

Hi Mark

Yes we would very much like to come to a Kcad talk I have 2 possible 3
interested

What time at 44 St Michael road?

derek


On 20/06/2017 11:01, Mark Benson wrote:

[Mark Benson]

The meetings usually start around 18:30 but it varies when people can
make it.

[Barker, Paul]

Apologies,

Would be interested in this topic, but unfortunately not able to attend this week.

Thanks

 

-- 

Paul Barker

Quality Engineer

Cobham Mission Systems

T : +44 (0) 1202 857616

M : +44 (0)7801 496555

paul....@cobham.com

 

Flight Refuelling Limited trading as Cobham Mission Systems, Brook Road, WIMBORNE, Dorset, BH21 2BJ, UK. +44 (0) 1202 882121 www.cobham.com/mission-systems

 

Registered office Brook Road, Wimborne, Dorset BH21 2BJ. Registered in England and Wales, company number 293529.

 

Please consider the environment before printing this email

 

From: bournemouth-re...@googlegroups.com [mailto:bournemouth-re...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of derek higbee
Sent: 20 June 2017 12:03
To: bournemouth-re...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [MakeBmth] Easter weekend

 

** The Sender is from outside the ERoW Datacentre organisation **

Hi Mark

[Mark Benson]

No worries,

Ed? You were the one who requested another KiCad session, so I guess you
have the deciding vote... If you can make it then I guess we do KiCad
else I'll postpone and try and fix the Box44 drawing machine instead.