Description
I was trying to mimic a crawling of a insect(an itsy bitsy in my son's baby language). I could mimic only the shape of it, not the actual mechanism.
After series of trial and errors (+ tiresome from my hand controlling the pot) I designed this itsy bitsy with two pushing legs and two guiding legs. I built four legs HAND-made from wire paper clip, and I added eraser pieces for the feet of pushing legs. I put some putty thing on top of the motor to fix the clip wires.
The result varied a lot from the pot control + wear and tear of the eraser feet. It was fun but I found the itsy bitsy way way too shy to show its crawling. (or, I should say, its performance was always better when it was not recorded..)
Component
1 - Arduino Uno
1 - Breadboard
1 - pot
1 - Servo Motor
many - wires
4 - paper clips
a piece of wire cable and rubber band
eraser piece
craft putty
Code
(I used the code from the class)
/*
* Servo with Potentiometer control
* Theory and Practice of Tangible User Interfaces
* October 11 2007
*/
int servoPin = 7; // Control pin for servo motor
int potPin = 0; // select the input pin for the potentiometer
int pulseWidth = 10; // Amount to pulse the servo
long lastPulse = 0; // the time in millisecs of the last pulse
int refreshTime = 20; // the time in millisecs needed in between pulses
int val; // variable used to store data from potentiometer
int minPulse = 500; // minimum pulse width
void setup() {
pinMode(servoPin, OUTPUT); // Set servo pin as an output pin
pulseWidth = minPulse; // Set the motor position to the minimum
Serial.begin(9600); // connect to the serial port
Serial.println("servo_serial_better ready");
}
void loop() {
val = analogRead(potPin); // read the value from the sensor, between 0 - 1024
if (val > 0 && val <= 999 ) {
pulseWidth = val*2 + minPulse; // convert angle to microseconds
Serial.print("moving servo to ");
Serial.println(pulseWidth,DEC);
}
updateServo(); // update servo position
}
// called every loop().
void updateServo() {
// pulse the servo again if the refresh time (20 ms) has passed:
if (millis() - lastPulse >= refreshTime) {
digitalWrite(servoPin, HIGH); // Turn the motor on
delayMicroseconds(pulseWidth); // Length of the pulse sets the motor position
digitalWrite(servoPin, LOW); // Turn the motor off
lastPulse = millis(); // save the time of the last pulse
}
}
Video
http://youtu.be/HWvZ1J_xBWI
