Dear motor forum
I am working on making a Rodent Operant Bucket (ROBucket) -- ROBucket | Hackaday.io -- for use in animal model neuroscience research, and looking to modify it to dispense food pellets in stead of liquid sucrose. This image is from the original ROBucket team (for some reason the wiring is not put in place in this picture):
The ROBucket is an operant conditioning chamber in a bucket, which has three holes with photo interrupters inside them, one of which dispenses a reward in the shape of a liquid sucrose solution, to shape the animal's behavior into poking its nose into a certain hole inside the bucket. The ROBucket has for its microcontroller parts a stack consisting of an Arduino UNO, an Adafruit SD logger shield which records nose pokes and reward deliveries, and a DFRobit LCD keypad shield for choosing different reward schedules. It also has three photo interrupters (I used SparkFun Photo Interrupter Breakout Board - GP1A57HRJ00F in place of the Karlsson Robotics photo interrupters used in the original ROBucket construction (which are not readily available in Europe)) and a relay (we use a Keyes SR1y in place of the Sainsmart 2-channel 5V relay module relay). Here are pictures of the design schematics:
And this is what now sits on my desk:
The thing seems to be working as such. When the correct nose poke is interrupted, the relay module says a click sound and its LED blinks a bright red and the reward counter adds a value on the LCD. So it seems to be able to let through current to the pellet dispenser.
Next step is then to connect this food pellet dispenser to the ROBucket sandwich, and make it dispense one pellet per reward. The pellet dispenser is an old device from the 1980s, but as I have a few of these readily available, it would be great I could make them work (if they work). Now, I am a novice in these realms of electronics, so bear with my limited thinking. When I look at the motor, I get these informations (stitched together from photos from different angles, because the pellet tray is in the way of taking one picture):
The original ROBucket uses a 12V Solenoid, and uses the same power supply for both the solenoid and the arduino. My thinking is that this is probably not sufficient to drive the Ledex stepping motor, and that I need to find a separate power source for that. I don't have the original power supply for the motor, so I need to find a new one. Looking at the specifications of this thing here, the LRS 150, I think it might be able to supply what I need? But I have no certainty.
Then I would also have to modify the ROBucket code to let through current with other parameters than those used to let liquid through the 12V solenoid. For this purpose, I think this cautionary note printed on the pellet depenser might be useful:
I think my question is, does anyone have any thoughts on whether the LRS-150 power supply will be able to supply the correct current to the pellet dispenser?
Kind regards