Controlling 230 volt motor

Hi there, this might be asked before, so apologies for that (maybe let me know where to find the thread?)

I have a universal motor , 230 volt from a wasmachine. It also has 2 wires from the tachometer.

Now we are going to use this in a fun project, and I thought it would be awesome if I could read out the tachometer with my arduino and control the motors speed by changing the voltage based on the current speed / desired speed!

Now I was wondering: is this possible, how hard is this going to be?
I just don't know which electronic parts I would need to regulate a high voltage current, and I also think the voltage of the signals of the tachometer are not 'steady', they might increase as the motor speeds up.
The programming part is less of a problem once I understand the electronic parts that I hook up.

Can anybody give me any pointer? thank you very much!

To control the motor, you need a phase angle controller. Google for "arduino phase angle controller" to find schematics. The tacho could be a Hall effect device or a variable reluctance sensor. Both can be read with an Arduino, but if it is the variable reluctance type then you may need to learn how to use the analog comparator.

Thanks for the quick reply.

I'm looking at: http://www.conrad.com/ce/en/product/191331/Conrad-Power-regulator-230VAC-Pre-Assembled-230-Vac
It seems like the device is controller by a variable resistance (I think) So could I use the Arduino somehow as a variable resistor? Or am I looking at the wrong device?

How could I find out if the tacho meter is a Hall effect device or a variable reluctance senso?

Thanks again!

  1. The datasheet for that controller says it uses an external potentiometer for power control, which would probably make it difficult to control from an Arduino.

  2. If the tacho only has a 2-wire connection then it is almost certainly the variable reluctance sort.

Do you have an example of a usable phase angle controller in a webshop somewhere? Then I could try to find a similar one in a local webshop. I think I found some good ones, but they were all 60 hz, while in the Netherlands we have 50 hz.
I did found one on this site: http://nl.farnell.com/united-automation/pcr-240-1/power-regulator-1-1a/dp/1338082 I think, but they only have 1 50hz and it says 1.1 amp, while on the motor it says 2 to 4 A, so I guess that would be a bad idea?

You might be able to hack some of the below controllers to do what you want.

[Redirect Notice]
](Redirect Notice) should be suitable.

zoomkat, those seem like manual controlled power regulators. How would I regulate power trough arduino using that exactly?

The AC phase control project seems interesting, but quite hard to follow. I don't think i'll be able to recreate that based on that page. I was hoping there would a more simple one-component voltage regulator that I could hook up. I guess I just gotta let this idea go, and do some other fun stuff with the arduino in the project.