I everyone, I am working on a project which consists on building a scale model replica of the mercedes benz stadium of the atlanta falcons. The idea is to make the retractable roof work. (See link video)
They are 8 petals rolling in straight line in one direction to open and then stop. And when asked, they roll in the opposite direction to close. I am wandering what type of motors i should use (i need 8 of them). I was thinking on using Arduino Uno, the adafruit 16 channel servo and 8 servos. Then i want to have it all work by Bluetooth on my android phone.
So my questions .... :
1 . will continuous rotation servos do the job (Each petals are really really light so wont need much power and i need them to open really slow so it should take about 10 seconds to open and 10 seconds to close)
2 . Since they will all be doing the exact same thing, can anyone supply a link for the simplest code to do so because i have never done it before. (I am completely new the all of this so im trying to learn alot).
Thank you so much for all your help. Much appreciated.
1 . will continuous rotation servos do the job (Each petals are really really light so wont need much power and i need them to open really slow so it should take about 10 seconds to open and 10 seconds to close)
Maybe. You'll be able to control the speed of the motors, but not the position, so you'll need to do some good guessing as to how long to run the motor, at what speed, to get it to just open one petal.
can anyone supply a link for the simplest code to do so because i have never done it before.
See above for why the answer is no.
Stepper motors would be a lot simpler to use. There will be a precisely defined number of steps needed to open or close a petal. But, they cost more, require a stepper driver for each one, and require more power.
If not battery powered, stepper motors would be the way to go for easier control, though servos are a good second. You need limit switches so you can detect when you reached the full extension or full closing of your roof.
Note that no matter what you still need some way to know where you actually are when using steppers (if only in case the power goes out halfway the move), so you'll need at the very least a limit switch on one end of the movement.
Steppers will be easier to synchronise perfectly, if that's a requirement. Servos always have some tolerance in speed, so with the same settings they won't all go at the exact same speed. In steppers, however, a step is a step, and if it has 200 steps per rotation you can be sure that after 200 steps you indeed made a complete rotation, no more no less (bar slip which shouldn't happen as long as you have a stepper that's strong enough for the job at hand).
