Hi! I'm new to this forum and the Arduino product. I do not yet own one and am trying to do my research before purchasing.
I would like to power 55 coin vibration motors. The goal is to activate for a short duration Motor's 1 - 55 as one program and then another program is to reverse it and activate Motor's 55 - 1.
What I believe I have been able to glean from my readings is there may be a problem with powering the motors due to limited volts and amp???
I'm hoping that someone in this forum will be able to help me put together the details I need to create the aforementioned effects.
Besides the motors and the Arduino, do I need another product?
Please keep in mind I'm a bit over my head but eager and willing to learn.
Thank you!
Sheldon22
You need one driver (FET...) for every motor, and a power supply that sources the maximum current drawn by all simultaneuosly active motors. You also need some port extender or multiplexer to drive 55 motors, unless you use an controller with 55 digital pins.
If only activating one at a time, there should be no problem running from USB power (with transistor driver).
You may need to add a R in series with the motor if their rated voltage is less than 5v.
Weedpharma
the common practice is to post a link to the data sheet. from that, we can offer pointers.
as weed said, if you plan on running one at a time, you need to size your power supply for one.
if you plan on running all of them, then your power supply needs to be sized to run them all at once.
The Arduino has a lot of notes about using a shift register. this uses 4 pins and can control 8 devices.
you can cascade them so you can 4 of the 595 shift register that are all being controlled by only 4 pins.
If you jus want to get it done quick and in a hurry, then buy 4 of the NANO clones from e-bay.
you can use one to control 13, and then use one pin out to signal the next unit to pick up where the first left off.
this would be much simpler because you only need to make one program and then copy it to the 4 NANO's.