Bobby pin crawler

Submitted by lwang on Tue, 03/19/2013 - 22:54

Description:

My original creation failed: I made a crawler using a pill bottle, pipe cleaners, tape, and the servo motor. Kept falling after the first couple tries....

 

 

so I made another: It has a stick connected to the motor with a bobby pin attacked to that. I attached rubber band to one leg. Because the bobby pin has two uneven legs, one of the legs propels it forward, while the other grabs the table. Much more stable and successful than the previous try....

 

Components:

pill bottle

pipe cleaner

tape

arduino

wires

servo motor

 

Code:

 

/*
 * 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 = 0;    // 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
  }
}
 
photo-8.JPG
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