Interface and Application Programming
The sixteenth assignment is to write an application that interfaces with an input &/or output device that you made,comparing as many tool options as possible.
My goal will be to tweak the coding of the speaker board and see if I can drive the car door actuator using the speaker driver software. I have tested and 5 Volts will not drive the car door actuator with enough power to make a sucessful dreidel dropping actuator. So the applicaton that I make will control a combination speaker board/network board. The goal is to get 20-100 dreidel's dropping with one board and then network a series of boards until the count exceeds the Guiness book of world records of 1200 dreidles spinning for 10 seconds or longer.
Unmodified speaker board.
Mosfet specs
Mosfet connections.
Red light tells me I have a bad connection somewhere.
I am starting with 5 volts and seeing what happens and then going to 12 Volts and see if it burns up and if I can control the actuator with code.
Five Volt test works, but wimpy actuation.
12 Volt tests works! Power is good. It works at least in short term trial. Not sure what will happen if I leave it connected for a long period of time. I shouldn't have to connect it for long periods. I think I can also use code to disconnect after the driedels drop.
I was impressed with the results. It seems to work. I will now invest in the time to redesign the boards with the new Mosfet installed. The boards will be a combination of the speaker board and network boards. I then need to tweak the coding.
Another picture of the Jerryrigged setup.
This Jerryrigged version works...so hopefully it will still work when I make the new boards.
So, this is the new milled dreidel node board. It is a combination of the previous sound board and the RS-232 network node.
This is the Eagle Schematic of the hybrid sound/node dreidel node board. It is a combination of the previous sound board and the RS-232 network node.
This is the Eagle Board file of the hybrid sound/node dreidel node board. It is a combination of the previous sound board and the RS-232 network node.
The code I loaded onto the board is driedel.drop.c. It is based off of Hello.bus.45.c. The files are driedel.drop.make, and dreideldrop.pde These programing files can be found in the File Repository on the left side of my main page. They are part of the final project.
The code works on the hybrid sound/node board. I use the existing bridge board to connect to the computer and the hybrid boards. Everything works, but I am a bit concerned about the strength of the actuator when it is under spring loaded pressure. I also need to tweek the code to slow down the actuation cycles. I really only need to have one pull. Currently the code is cycling a bit too fast. I also have concerns about running current too long through the hybrid board and overheating it. But......it works!
I modified Neil's "Hello.bus.45.c" and "Hello.45.make code" to fulfill the assignment to write an application that interfaces with a device that I make. The driedel dropping board that I made is triggered by code that connects a computer to each of the dreidel node boards. I identified each node as "node 1" as I want all nodes to trigger and drop the driedels at the same time. The code can be seen by selecting the names of the files, or by going to the file repository on the left hand side of the screen.
This is a screen shot of the computer display of the code running on the computer