Electronics support

[Justin]

Please feel free to post your non-project specific electronics questions here.

[JiaYi Lin]

hi Justin, i try to work on the pump which you gave me. but when i tested the function of tubes, i made a mistake of pulling one of them(3 tubes totally) out. and i didn't get the gear which connects to the stepper motor. i bought the 12v 6 pins stepper motor from Jaycar, do i need a Dalington array to connrct the stepper to the Arduino? i got lost with connect it to the Arduino now. Could you help? Kerry

[Stephie]

Hi Justin,

I was wondering if, during this weeks tutorial workshop, I could get some help with the flex sensors. I've been playing with them over the week since collecting them from Rob but have been having some trouble trying to get accurate readings. I made a blog post last week (Flex (bend) sensors) about it describing what I've tried to do.

Steph

[Justin]

sure, no problem.

[Justin]

I'm so sorry Kerry; I've only just read this comment now! I normally get emails when they're posted??



JiaYi Lin said:

hi Justin, i try to work on the pump which you gave me. but when i tested the function of tubes, i made a mistake of pulling one of them(3 tubes totally) out. and i didn't get the gear which connects to the stepper motor. i bought the 12v 6 pins stepper motor from Jaycar, do i need a Dalington array to connrct the stepper to the Arduino? i got lost with connect it to the Arduino now. Could you help? Kerry

[David Bartolo]

Hi Justin,
Unfortunately I was unable to make it last night, but I wonder if you have any tips:

I am driving a 4-wire CDROM stepper, which needs the signals A, B, !A, !B across the sets of windings A and B. I have ordered an Easydriver board from sparkfun but they are on backorder, so I may need to drive it myself. Do you have any ideas of the best way to do this?
thanks
Daqvid

[Stephie]

Hi Justin!

** MAJOR PROBLEM! **

Last week my Arduino was reading from the 3 flex sensors fine, as well as the muscle flex sensor. On Thursday I demonstrated this to Rob as well. All good there. I've been trying to integrate it all together into the one big sketch that I did in Processing a little while back. It's got a few bugs, but they're fixable. What I can't see as being fixable at the moment, is that my Arduino is giving me stupid stupid stuuuuuuuupid readings!! >.<

Judging by the readings I get (they hover around 300-400 and sometimes are affected by the values I get from the other sensors), I gather it has something to do with a connection issue with my analog input pins. You see, the 2 flex sensors I plug into analog pins 0 & 1 give expected readings. I've switched the flex sensor around to test if the 3rd was faulty - not the case. I used different holes in my breadboard - not the issue. I used different breadboard wires - still, not the issue. I tried switching different analog input pins - 0 & 1 give me expected readings, but the rest just don't seem to.

I did the same thing with my muscle flex sensor, which, like the 3rs flex sensor isn't giving me expected readings. But this happens even when I put it into analog pin 0, which, stupidly, works fine for my flex sensors.

Any idea as to why I'm getting these problems? :(
-Steph