Modified Code

         Today I worked on the code that I uploaded yesterday.  There are still a few things that I would like to fix such as not allowing the user to press the same button sequentially.   I would like to add this feature because I don't want the carriage to be told to move in a direction when it's already at the edge.  Otherwise the carriage will be pushing against the wall.  
          The code I wrote today is the following:

Here is a video of the code working.  At the beginning i'm showing that the servo is attached to pin 6 and I lay the deodorant stick down and press the buttons.  This is what the cold will be doing to the carriage the only difference is that the carriage is on a track and will go straight.   The second part of the video is me showing the servo is attached to pin 9 and how using a potentiometer one can raise and lower the cup.

-Mike Law                                                                                                                                

This code is similar to the one in an earlier post, but the speed of the motor was more controlled. If you scroll down to the video of the motor and legos titled "Main mechanism!", this is the code used for it to slide left and right.

deoderant stick and continuous servo

The bubble solution will be placed inside the cup and will be raised to the wand.  In order for this to work I cut a deodorant stick as shown

 and screwed a servo arm to the bottom.

Although it is not shown in this picture I ended up using duct tape because the arm was still able to move.  After that was completed I hooked up the continuous servo motor to the bottom and taped the servo to the stick at the bottom.

Here is a video of the motor moving the cup up and down.

Now that I have this part functioning I can begin messing around with the code so that when the cart is directly under the bubble solution the cup will rise.

Main mechanism!

We introduce to you the Lego in "Lego Bubble Blowing Machine." The servo has been masked under legos, but it's function can clearly be seen in this video. It serves as a slider between two ends of lego land. This setup was built upon the older idea of the two cups in one of the earlier posts. The purpose of it all is still the same, though. Imagine bubbles at one end and a fan at the other. Now imagine a bubble wand extending from the servo in which will dip into that awesome solution of soap, and then transfer itself to the other side to create bubbles!  

I also purchased a set of propellers of Amazon.com and attached one to a DC motor.   We were having trouble finding a fan that would work.  It's still not the most powerful fan but it does produce a breeze.

I also grabbed a empty deodorant can and screwed a arm to a servo motor to the bottom of it.  What I'd like to do the next time our group meets is see if Chris's continuous servo would work on the bottom.  What we want to do is have bubble solution inside and have the servo on the bottom crank it up.   

H-Bridge Working

I recently purchased a H-Bridge online and I found code to test it with.  Now that I see it works I'm going to add two buttons to my breadboard and program my arduino so that when one button is pressed it travels one way and when the other is pressed it travels the other.  I also need to slow down my DC motor.

video of the servo in continuous motion

video of the mechanism moving back and forth, done by hand

picture of the moving assembly

picture of the H-bridge

I've modified my servo in order for it to move continuously in both directions, with this i can attach it to the moving tram so it will move back and forth.

I have made an H-bridge that will allow for better controls of motors.

I have coding for both the H-bridge and the servo that is modified both from code made by my professor, and code that I found online

-Christopher Riccio

Bubblesteen Bubble Machine.avi

Here is a video which inspired our first ideas into something alittle bit more snazzy.

The first draft!

During the second group meeting, we built upon the idea of the bubble machine by splitting the workload between the four of us. Each of us thought of our own mechanisms, and thought about combining them into one whole mechanism by the end mark of this project.

For one of the schematics, a DC motor was placed upon an iron bar which was stacked onto two cups. The cups are approximately a foot and a half away from each other. The DC motor will function as a kind of slider, which the bubble wand is attached to. It will slide back and forth between both ends of the bar. At one end of the bar there will be a bubble solution in which the wand will dip and slide to the other end. At the other end there is a fan that will blow the bubble!! Here is a sketch of what the schematic looks like.

 

Here is an upside down picture of our apparatus. It was faced upside down for interest points. Just kidding, we couldn't get it to be rightsideup.

And since we didn't mention this in the previous blog, our fellow bubblers are Mike Law, Christopher Riccio, Irini Billiri, and Sianvirath Chea.        

First Official Meeting - 11/11/13

     On the morning of Monday, November 11, 2013, our first official meeting as a group took place. During the pervious lab period, we decided to construct a Bubble Machine. This bubble machine will have a fan connected to a DC motor, and multiple bubble wands connected to a Servos. The bubble wands will bend down from their inital positions into a vat of solution below, and upon rising, the fan will blow air agains them, forming bubbles.

Figure 1 below shows a rough diagram of how the machine will be set up.

     Where part 1(and the similar knobs below) represent each of the wands to be connected by a servo to dip into the solution. Each wand will be connected to it's own individual Servo, and will be controlled by their own buttons. Part 2 represents a large board used as a base. This base board will also have a large container of bubble fluid on it for the wands to dip in. Part 3 represents a DC motor that will spin 360` and will have one single wand attached to it. Finally, part 4 is where the fan will be located, and will be a DC motor with a propellor, or just a stronger fan, depending on what we find.

The code below is a draft of the code to run the DC motor and the fan.

https://gist.github.com/lawm1991/7416595