Spinning Sprinkler Part 2

How can one motor cause so much trouble?!?!?!?  I learned from last week I need to walk before I run.  I need to do one thing at a time so I know what specifically isn't working.

Monday was all about job interviews and charter school board meetings.  So no time for tinkering.

Tuesday my homeschool science class wanted to play with the Arduino kit.  Their joy at controlling a blinking light was contagious.

This breathed some life back into my maker spirit.  I tried motor again with the directions from the book.  redid circuits.  checked code with the project 10 in the book.  tried switching the diode, nothing.

Working circuit for the temperature sensor and LED.

I went back to the beginning a got the LED to light up.  Then I redid sensor with success!
I even got the sensor to light up an LED!  I then tested the motor by connecting directly with a 9v battery to see if it works.

I searched my colleagues' blogs and tried the motor circuit and code again.  nothing.

I let some Hulu run in the background, ate some leftover chili and went to the power of Google.

I found a setup from John Nussey  I was worried about the on/off cycle only being 1 sec each, so I bumped it to 4 sec.  Nothing.  It's a DC motor, so I didn't think the order of the wires mattered, but I switched them just to see.  Success!  I got so excited!!!!! The motor spun....... once, turned off and that was it. UGH!!!  I tried again a few more times and kept getting an error screen from the IDE.  I admitted defeat it was time for a break and turned the computer over to the youngest to connect with friends before bedtime.

Working circuit for the motor.

Thursday morning, and I am adequately caffeinated to try again. Scared I burned something up, I went back to lighting up an LED.  Success there.  I rewired the motor and set the code back to 1 sec , "Let's try switching the motor leads again.  But first I should take a picture so I remember which way works and which doesn't.  Oh, wait..... I see what I did."  Do you see the mistake in the picture?  Here's a hint, I had just tested the LED in top right corner.  Since the motor is strictly wired in the left half, it is on a separate circuit......even the POWER and GROUND!  I fixed it and *drum roll* ...... the motor cycled just as the code is written.

I played around with how to power the sensor/LED circuit on the right side of the breadboard and the motor circuit on the right side.

I got the sensor to talk to the motor briefly, then the sensor quit showing data.  I decided I needed my dad to take a look and help me figure out what I was doing wrong.

Working code for the temperature sensor to turn on the LED and the motor.

While I waited for my dad to come over for our Thursday coffee, bacon, and eggs together, I tinkered some more. Since I had the code uploaded, I hooked up the 9V battery to the board so I would have to stay hooked up to the computer.  Once he got to my house and  I had him fed, I showed him my idea.  He doesn't really understand doing things for the fun of it.  For him, everything needs to have a useful purpose like fixing an AC unit or a furnace.  Building a sprinkler to be artistic was lost on his utility mindset.  But he was a good sport listening to my idea.  Below is our conversation about my project and his wisdom from his work experience with circuits and programmed boards.  It cuts off because I forgot to put my phone in airplane mode and a robocall stopped the recording.

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MILD LANGUAGE WARNING!

MY DAD CALLS HIMSELF A WISE*$$ IN THIS VIDEO

I finally got the temperature sensor to control the motor!  Whoohoo!

Working circuit of sensor with motor.

[1 more video to be added/ loaded sideways to YouTube]
Next, I wanted to see if the motor would turn the prototype spinning sprinkler.  Dad was skeptical the motor was strong enough.  We devised a holder to mount the sprinkler on the motor and did indeed get it to spin.  We had some technical difficulties testing it in the water.  We went outside because of the water mess.  It was a bit cold, so we tried friction to warm our hands then the sensor.  We tried a mug of hot water to warm our fingers then the sensor.  Then I took it inside and reprogrammed the board with a much lower temperature setting.  And then a wire broke off the motor.  I was majorly bummed and too brain dead to problem solve anymore that day.

The phone ran out of space to shoot more video and I needed a break about the same time.  Later,  I fixed the wire on the motor easy enough, but I haven't had the time to try it out in the water yet.  The spinning sprinkler remains a concept that will be further explored at a later date when I'm not busy writing charter school proposals and celebrating my dad turning 74.




I do think the design needs to have the motor mounted from the top.  I'm just not sure I want a motorized system under a water source.  I'd also like to explore having the power source solar.  I think I can work that into the top bracket system.

To fix the wobbling, the tubes coming down into the water need to be mounted on the side of the center pole rather than on the front.  I could also drill a hole in the cross section tube and run the center pole through that.  Right now the "coupler" that connects the motor to the center pole is the cap from a marker that I drill a hole just big enough to snug onto the motor shaft.  I trimmed the side piece of the cap that clips onto things, but I didn't spend a lot of time making it symmetric.  The pole isn't in the center of the coupler either.  With all those tweaks, I think the wobble problem will be fixed.






For now, I'm at an artistic roadblock.  I'll leave it for a bit.  But there's copper tubing in my garage talking to me.  It says it wants to be a cool sprinkler that is pretty and useful.