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 ?
Thanks !
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.
Pololu has a good line of modern motor drivers. They have quality products backed by very good instructional pages for their application.
groundFungus:
You certainly will not get far powering the dots (motors) from the Nano 5V line.
From what I've been reading I thought that was possible, here are two examples: Four Flip Dots Controlled by Arduino Uno and L293D
Making a connected flip-dot installation | by Resn | Resn | Medium
Does my project just cant go on like this? ::((
Does my project just cant go on like this?
How can I know? You did not answer my question. What are the voltage and current requirements of the dots?
Shouldn't the enable pins of the L293 drivers be connected to 5V, not 3.3V?
Did you get just one dot to work before wiring them all up?
Post your test code.
groundFungus:
You did not answer my question.
I sent you the links, they work on +/-5v volt, as minimum
groundFungus:
Shouldn't the enable pins of the L293 drivers be connected to 5V, not 3.3V?
the enable pin is attached to the d13, it is wrong on the sketch.
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.
