Hello everyone, I am doing a project that has 3x3 flip dots, equals 9 dots, and controlling them with and arduino and 5 l293d bridges. attached is an image with the way the test prototype was made, the motors are there to represent the dots, but I've tried a lot of coding and can't make a single one of the dots to flip.
Anyone has an idea to a simple way to code just a flip all off them just so I can start ?
You certainly will not get far powering the dots (motors) from the Nano 5V line. You will need to power the dots with an external power supply capable of supplying the proper voltage and current to the dots.
What are the voltage and current requirements of the dots?
The L293 motor drivers are ancient an inefficient drivers. They will drop 2 to 4 volts (depending on current) all by themselves. You may need to supply extra voltage to overcome the voltage drop.
With each dot on a separate pair of half-bridges, set the two pins going to the half-bridge inputs to LOW,HIGH or HIGH,LOW to set which side to flip to, then turn on the Enable briefly to do the flip. I would start with two lists of pins: The 9 pins going to Input 1 or Input 3 (call then the Odd pins) and the 9 pins going to Input 2 or Input 4 (call them the Even pins). Then you can use a single 'for' loop (int i=0; i < 9; i++) to go through the 9 sets of pins.