Print PDF
Favorite
Email
Step 11Moving on to electronics
At this point I was pretty much done with the hardware. I screwed the motors back into their mounts, screwed the couplings back on, and set it aside for a moment.
If you like, take a 9V battery and touch it to the terminals of each motor and watch them draw stuff on the etch-a-sketch screen. It's pretty cool, isn't it? Science is definitely happening.
The next steps of the instructable will explain how to hook up the etch-a-sketch to a microcontroller and program it to draw stuff.
The schematic below is frustrating to read. Hover your mouse over it and click the small italic 'i' at the bottom left corner. It should show the same frustrating image on a new page, but with a link to the original ~1000x1000 pixel image. Click the link, and the schematic should pop up with blinding clarity. Sorry about that.
As I mentioned at the start of the instructable, I used an Atmega48 micro. I used an stk500 to program it, and I breadboarded up an L293D motor driver, which I powered with a 6V battery pack. I kept the atmel on board the stk500.
If you haven't checked out the L293 chip, I highly suggest you do. It's called (somewhat irritatingly) a quad half-H chip. An H-bridge is a name for an electrical circuit that allows you to create a forward or backward potential difference across a load (i.e. drive a motor forward or backward). This gorgeous chip can handle up to .6A at 35V if you ask it nicely (heat sink the crap out of it) and control two different brushed motors simultaneously, or you could use it to drive one unipolar or bipolar stepper motor. I use them like they were candy. Circuit candy. That I put in my breadboards instead of gorging myself on their sweet silicony flavors.
If you're not familiar with atmel programming, may I suggest some of these fabulous instructables?
If you like, take a 9V battery and touch it to the terminals of each motor and watch them draw stuff on the etch-a-sketch screen. It's pretty cool, isn't it? Science is definitely happening.
The next steps of the instructable will explain how to hook up the etch-a-sketch to a microcontroller and program it to draw stuff.
The schematic below is frustrating to read. Hover your mouse over it and click the small italic 'i' at the bottom left corner. It should show the same frustrating image on a new page, but with a link to the original ~1000x1000 pixel image. Click the link, and the schematic should pop up with blinding clarity. Sorry about that.
As I mentioned at the start of the instructable, I used an Atmega48 micro. I used an stk500 to program it, and I breadboarded up an L293D motor driver, which I powered with a 6V battery pack. I kept the atmel on board the stk500.
If you haven't checked out the L293 chip, I highly suggest you do. It's called (somewhat irritatingly) a quad half-H chip. An H-bridge is a name for an electrical circuit that allows you to create a forward or backward potential difference across a load (i.e. drive a motor forward or backward). This gorgeous chip can handle up to .6A at 35V if you ask it nicely (heat sink the crap out of it) and control two different brushed motors simultaneously, or you could use it to drive one unipolar or bipolar stepper motor. I use them like they were candy. Circuit candy. That I put in my breadboards instead of gorging myself on their sweet silicony flavors.
If you're not familiar with atmel programming, may I suggest some of these fabulous instructables?
| « Previous Step | Download PDFView All Steps | Next Step » |
 |
Add Comment
|
