#4844232
So I recently picked up one of ThrowingChicken's Giga Meter kits and have been slowly putting it together in my spare time. As he's provided many examples of how to put it together, I'll instead focus on the electronics and final touches as they come up.

I've been thinking a lot about how I wanted to do the electronics as I've never really worked with DC motors before and wanted to do something that would be small enough to fit in the shell while also be easy enough to share with others. I decided to use an Arduino Pro Mini and some other small chips that would not only fit inside the battery compartment, but would also simplify the wiring.

As it stands, I've currently got some LEDs blinking and the DC motor spinning consistently:



The Arduino will drive the motor and LEDs in both the wings and dome directly while also controlling the 7 segment display using I2C and a MAX6958 (I might possibly change this as I have other displays currently being shipped to me to test out). I'm also planning to use a small LiPo three cell battery to power the whole thing as the motor needs quite a bit of current to get going initially. (It kept tripping my small boost converter I was using to convert from 5V up to 12V)

I've been using codebender to write my code which should allow others to easily copy and modify it to their tastes if they would like:

https://codebender.cc/sketch:153082

I've still got to get the code finished up, slip ring installed in the main rotor, and get some of the dome LEDs wired up to test the different timings to get the movie pattern. I'm moving into a new apartment this weekend but should hopefully have some extra time next week to get started on that.

Let me know your thoughts and if you have any recommendations/suggestions on my code or setup!
#4849046
Can you help me with this set up?
I am familiar with arduino but not with the coding.
Help me with a wiring tutorial?

Cole Funstuff wrote:So I recently picked up one of ThrowingChicken's Giga Meter kits and have been slowly putting it together in my spare time. As he's provided many examples of how to put it together, I'll instead focus on the electronics and final touches as they come up.

I've been thinking a lot about how I wanted to do the electronics as I've never really worked with DC motors before and wanted to do something that would be small enough to fit in the shell while also be easy enough to share with others. I decided to use an Arduino Pro Mini and some other small chips that would not only fit inside the battery compartment, but would also simplify the wiring.

As it stands, I've currently got some LEDs blinking and the DC motor spinning consistently:



The Arduino will drive the motor and LEDs in both the wings and dome directly while also controlling the 7 segment display using I2C and a MAX6958 (I might possibly change this as I have other displays currently being shipped to me to test out). I'm also planning to use a small LiPo three cell battery to power the whole thing as the motor needs quite a bit of current to get going initially. (It kept tripping my small boost converter I was using to convert from 5V up to 12V)

I've been using codebender to write my code which should allow others to easily copy and modify it to their tastes if they would like:

https://codebender.cc/sketch:153082

I've still got to get the code finished up, slip ring installed in the main rotor, and get some of the dome LEDs wired up to test the different timings to get the movie pattern. I'm moving into a new apartment this weekend but should hopefully have some extra time next week to get started on that.

Let me know your thoughts and if you have any recommendations/suggestions on my code or setup!

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