First of all, apologies if this is in the wrong place, I'm very unfamiliar with Arduino but have been put in a tight spot by someone who did some work for me.
The original design utilised an ATMEGA1284P PU 1324, a relay and a pump (12v), a number pad and an lcd screen. Sadly I have none of the software available (except the software stored on our board) and some of the schematics, as the guy who was doing it for me disappeared and broke contact immediately after the first few boards were done.
I am looking to make a more refined one, using an Official Arduino Mega and I would really like some help.
Ideally I would like to be able to input a number which would trigger the pump to pump that number of times and then shut off, allowing some control over the amount of liquid being dosed into the tank.
Can anyone help with the parts/code that I would need to purchase to make this a reality?
I have attached a picture of our old board + schematic and also the spec sheet of the pump.
Thank you for your time and once again sorry if this is in the wrong place.
There are plenty of arduino starter kits on ebay etc that have an LCD display and a keypad and a mega or normal arduino.
I'm not sure you really need a mega.
You will need a transistor driver or relay to control your pump
But overall, yes, this is the right place to post, and yes it's not hard to do what you want, but it depends on your level of experience
I already have a Mega that I picked up a little while ago when the project first came to be. But as I may need to make a few more.
I am probably just being blind, but I can't seem to find any tutorials or anything that have any base code that I can learn from, especially ones that use a stock Arduino board and go from start to finish.
As to my level of experience, it is below non-existant haha.
For tutorials for complete projects take a look on Instructables
Also The Arduino site has how to's for various things.
The Arduino IDE also has lots of built in examples you can open and then upload to your Mega.
But until you buy a keypad and a LCD screen, you are not really going to be able to do very much except perhaps write some test code that simulates sending pulses to you pump, by flashing the on board led each time a pump action would take place.
So you need to break the project down into various phases, e.g
Work out what hardware you need. E.g. arduino mega. LCD, keypad, transistor output module.
Try to establish whether these hardware elements are compatible with each other. I can't see this would be a problem on a mega as it has loads of pins.
Work out how you are going to wire the modules together, e.g. A prototyping shield and solder the wires etc.
Btw can you solder, I suspect it won't be possible to build this without some soldering
What housing are you going to put this in, etc.
How are you going program it. Do you have any programming experience etc.
For anyone who does this sort of thing for a living, or its their hobby, its not a difficult project, but if its not your area of expertise, it could be a steep learning curve
couple of questions. first off is if the pump has worked for what you want ? does your board actually make the pump work ?
the piston pump data sheet is not as clear for me as I would like. I cannot tell of the piston has a spring return or if you need to energize the coil one way to pump and then in reverse to retract.
if this is the the case, then you are lucky because a simple H-bridge would work.
as for the numbers to tell the unit how many, that is pretty easy as well.
you have a few choices there. a pot, connected to the A/I will offer you between 1,024 and about 950, or so, depending on how your pot reacts at the end of the turn.
so, if you wanted say, 500, you could turn the pot until 500 came up on the display. then you could press one button to start.
if all you are after is to select a value, then press a button to deliver that value, you can get this done pretty easily.
the board you show seems to have a lot more going on and the chip selected has a lot more power than just inputting a value, then sending that many doses.
if this is to be a slick package for a item for sale, then you will want a nicer interface than a pot.
Thank you Roger for the links, I've had a browse through for a few hours but I can't narrow down anything that sounds like my project, though that could very easily be put down to my inexperience with Arduino in general.
And thank you Dave for going more in depth about my issue.
I already have the keypad (it's the same one that you can see on this site quite often, blue, black and red 1-9) and an LCD 4x20 display.
The pump I have is driven via the energising of the coil, rather than by a spring.
Ideally the process would be as follows:
Connect pump input line to source fluid and output line into destination tank
Input amount of destination fluid (this would take into account the number of times the pump would pump before switching off) At 3000:1 this would mean that with 300 Litres of destination fluid the pump would need to pump 1600(ish) times (amount per stroke is 0.065ml)
After inputting the amount in destination tank, the star key is then pressed to start the pumping procedure
Once the correct strokes have been reached the pump will then shut off.