Thank for the answers so far.
It's a secret personal experimental project im working on. Can't tell you what it is exactly. but I can tell you what I want it to do. And when I finished I will reveal it here. It has something to do with food.
But I agree that I should give you guys more information. So you can advice me better about what to purchase to build it with arduino.
So the device am trying to make has a 3,2 inch touchscreen as input. On the screen you will see 3 options. For example: Sweet, Sour and Spicy (for now I'll just assume user chooses "sweet")
When the user selects his taste, another option/question will appear: Small, Medium and Large (for now I'll just explain the medium)
So the 3 different tastes are in 3 different containers (below each container there is a motor), when I choose the taste "sweet", the motor that is attached to the container "sweet" will start to turn.
Below each "taste container" I want to place a container that will cath the "sweet taste" when the motor rotates
On the bottom of those 3 containers I wanna place a load cell from a 5 dollar precision scale (up to 0,01 gram). So a total of 3 load cells are needed.
Ofcource The load cells are connected to the input. So lets say the option "small" represents 0,5 gram, "Medium" will represent 1,5 gram and the option "large" will represent 2,5 gram
So when I have chosen for the option "medium" and "sweet", I want the motor of the "sweet taste" container to start running untill the load cell confirmes that 1,5 gram has been reached. At that point I want the motor to stop.
Now below each container (with load cells on the bottom) there is another motor (so 3 extra motors).
So when the motor reaches 1,5 gram of the "sweet taste" and that motor is instructed to stop, I want the motor that is below the load cell to start turning 180 degrees. This is only needed to throw the 1,5 gram of "sweet taste" that is in the small container into a bigger container.
The bigger container is needed because the "taste" is not the head ingredient. Lets assume that the head ingredient is "flower"
Well each of the end product this device makes has to have a certain volume (taste + flower). So in the "bigger container" I wanna place a sensor that measures the volume. I wanna do this with a simple laser sensor.
So the user selected "sweet" and "medium", so the motor of "sweet" will rotate untill the load cell detects that 1,5 gram has been made. the motor stoppes spinning, the motor below the load cell will turn 180 degrees to the left and back(resulting in the "sweet taste to drop into a bigger container)"
Now the motor of the container that contains the "flower" will spin, below the "flower" there is not a smaller container with a load cell. No, the flower is placed direct above the "bigger container"
so the motor of the flower will spin and will drop the flower on top of the "sweet taste" that lies in the "bigger container", the laser will indicate if a certain volume (always the same) has been reached. When the volume is reached the motor of the "flower" should stop spinning.
Now we got a "bigger container" that is filled with flower and "sweet taste"
Below the "bigger container" there are 3 motors that will be activated as soon as the "flower motor" has stopped.
1 motor will just rotate the container, 1 motor will (autumn/fall) the container. You can compare this to a small spinning concread mill that is slowly being poored.
The now mixed flower and sweet taste will fall into a funnel into a form.
To make sure nothing sticks to the funnel I want to make it vibrate. So this is where I need that 3rd motor that also has to be avtivated as soon as the "flower motor" has stopped.
So to answer ur questions:
-3 load cells
-1 laser sensor
-1 3,2 inch touchscreen
-9 stepping motors
Hope you have a better idea about the "bigger picture" or did I just made things more complicated?