Arduinos (no, I've no idea what they are) - for my new project.

chillidoggy · August 2013

Without wishing to steal Emp's thunder, I've been struggling with how to open a pair of butterfly valves for the heater air in the car footwell for ages now, and kept drawing a blank. I just want to turn them 90 degrees on or off, and mechanically it's a bit of a pain, with cables and bracket and all kinds of shit. So, I did what any sensible person would do, and gave it to a colleague to sort out. Surprisingly, he decided to reccomend a different route from the mechanical one. This is what he came back with:-

"I have found a method of controlling your butterfly control, all off Ebay, I have put the item numbers in, just copy and paste into the ebay search panel.

You need: 1 x Potentiometer such as – 300922908619 - £0.99

1 x Knob – 180994451101 - £0.99

1 x Arduino Nano board – 171095091836 - £12.18 or the Arduino Duemilanove – 221133730048 - £17.90

1 x 5v DC Servo, high torque – 261160068209 - £17.99

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It can be hard wired up, but I would bench test first by using a breadboard connector so that you can just poke the wires in, program it all up, before fitting to car. 390637914858 - £1.45

The Arduino board is a fantastic piece of kit. It can be programmed in seconds, see youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVZJy6OlwcA There are many tutorials on how to set up a servo with a potentiometer on youtube.

You just set the maximum parameters, in time, that you want the servo to operate within ie operate to the left from zero point for 3 seconds, to fully open the valve to demist, or to the right for 3 seconds to fully open valve for footwell, then when you turn the potentiometer, the servo follows and stops at any point between, that you release the knob. The potentiometer above is just an example, you probably already have one, or a slider would do. Quite a cheap setup which will suit I think. Have a look on Youtube though, there is loads of info."

I think it's prevarication time, possibly a bit of head-scratching, and no doubt some fannying around in the garage.

OilCityPickups · August 2013

I too have been pointed to the Arduino as a solution to one of my nagging problems. My winding work station has a simple additive electronic counter, actuated by a reed switch and a magnet. There is nothing stopping me from getting to the required number of turns for a particular pickup ... and then ... because I'm concentrating on the wind pattern, over winding by anything up to 150 or so turns. My solution at the moment is to laboriously unwind any wire over the odds, and this ends up in the waste copper bin as it's impossible to re-spool. It's never more than 150 turns, as I discipline myself to keep looking at the counter every few seconds as the wind total gets near ... but wasting wire irks me! Apparently it would be a doddle to program an Arduino board and an electronic counter to automatically stop when it reached the prescribed number of turns, thus freeing me up to focus my attention on the wind pattern.
The problem is I simply don't have the time to research and sort out the tech at the moment.

monquixote · August 2013

Chili that sounds like a pretty complex undertaking for a valve.

If it's not really your field it might be a fairly challenging undertaking.

chillidoggy · August 2013

Well, I am a tenacious old thing, and I do like a challenge. In fact my son says that the only thing that ever beats me is a four-letter word called 'diet'.

I shall be investigating the Arduino solution this week, while I'm off work.

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Arduinos (no, I've no idea what they are) - for my new project.

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