Assignment: DC Motor: Actuation Assignment 1

Collaborators:

I decided that the spinning motion of the motor could be used to create a gentle rotating effect in the background of my desk to subtly inform me of any particular piece of information (how much email I'm getting today, or how busy my processor is, or whatever).

I created a lily out of a pink patterned piece of origami paper and attached it to the DC motor.  

Unfortunately, rather than a slow, elegant rotation in the background, the motor wouldn't turn at all until a certain, high frequency, so the flower either turned not at all or at a high rate, such that it was a pink blur.  I tried various methods to slow it down (tissue paper on the bottom, with and without a cork base, a resistor in series), with little success.

I still think the paper flower might be a nice piece on a desk, but the sudden (and loud) spinning makes this far from the ambient output device I was hoping for.

This video starts with the slowest speed I was able to get from the motor.  After it stops, it requires a high speed to finally get moving again.

Code

I used the simplest possible code while testing the rotating flower. Eventually this could be used with a serial connection to vary the speed based on conditions from a computer.

//motor
//simplified

int motorControl = 6; 
int potPin = 5;

boolean DEBUG = false;

void setup() {

}

void loop() {
  int val = analogRead(potPin);    // read the value from the sensor, between 0 - 1024
  Serial.println(val);
  analogWrite(motorControl, val/4); // analogWrite can be between 0-255
}