Wheel of Death

Arduino Project: Motorised Pinwheel

The challenges in building the Motorised Pinwheel then having it work was fulfilling and satisfying! It reminds me back in my Grade 11 and 12 (final year) where we had to create sustainable energy using DC motors and mini solar panels. I would collect the DC motors from my brother’s old toys like cars and robots to complete the projects back then, we would have to use the DC motors as a wheel to produce energy. Another thing I forgot to mention since week 3 (conductive ink and light sensors) is that I have also done something similar to the glowing house, except it uses 9v battery and a switch instead of a phototransistor, as seen in Figure 1. The circuit is created using wires instead of a conductive ink and is hidden under the NASA bedroom floor as seen in Figure 2.

Figure 1. House created in 2019 for a Physics project in Garde 12

Figure 2. It was an individual work and the whole circuit board was under this room

Since we are the first ones to use the Arduinos, we were given a free orange, heavy-duty storage slot to organise our components and a storage lid to protect the Arduino board! Although, I have not used the orange box since it was easy for me to arrange them in the Arduino box.

Motorising the DC motor was the first task we had to do, our materials needed are: MOSFET, 10 kiloohm resistors, diode 1N4007, motor, 9v battery, battery snap, and a switch. I thought that the MOSFET (Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor) looked similar to the BJT (Bipolar Conjunction) transistor we used during Week 3 of glowing houses, so I searched up their differences and similarities. They are similar because of they are considered normal transistors, while they are different because of how they work and behave:

A BJT transistor is a current-controlled device. That is to say th current flowing into the base of the transistor controls the current flowing into the collector.
A MOSFET is a voltage-controlled device. The voltage you apply across the gate controls how much current flows into the drain.

Now, I understand why we had to use a MOSFET, because we had to control the voltage of the motor and the battery! I looked more on the Arduino book on said project and it explained the three pins: gate, drain, and source. The gate pin is used when it detects change in voltage then bridges a connection between the two other pins. This pin is called drain, when the Arduino activates the transistor by supplying voltage to the gate, this pin will be connected to the third pin called the source. The source pin is connected to the ground.

The motor gave me jump scares when it worked - it was hilarious though! I can say that its amazing how strong the Arduino motor was compared to the motors I had collected in the past, maybe because they were old so it did not perform well as this one!

Figure 4. Motor with the 'wheel of death'

By the time I activated my motor, I then crafted using the CD, patterned cardboard, and the orange parts that came with Arduino to bring in the pinwheel! I give my thanks to Estelle for bringing CDs for me and her (and for saving my hair when I did silly stuff)!

I took the concept for this week too literally: interaction and motion, by touching the motor and feeling the wind of the pinwheel (Don't be like me; don't try this anywhere) 🤣

Website development and designing

Commenting and Reaction System

I tried to fix the commenting system in my blog from March 23-25, and it worked, thank Lord!

In March 23, I tried to install Lyket and CommentBox.io into the blog but it was difficult, especially when there are not much documentation about it. I had to go out of my way to contact support from Lyket for help but they require a support fee of $100, so I decided not too. On that same day, I just went for Disqus commenting system again and used their trial version for 30 days. The reason why I did not want to use it is because it had lot of privacy issues in the past, lots of advertisements popping out, and it does not display the reactions properly on my blog.

But thanks to that trials and errors on March 23, I was able to install Hyvor Talk on March 25 which is much better than Disqus, Lyket, and CommentBox because better privacy and in-built reactions and comment system - three-in-one!

Figure 5. Disqus has low-quality ads that show to users, and that is what happened to me but with more ads in the top and bottom of the commenting system :/ .Source from WordPress Tavern

Figure 6. Hyvor Talk has no ads, has reactions and commenting system, and a pleasing UI! Source from apdv.dev.

Website Design

I enjoyed and tried designing my website on March 27! It doesn't look all that fantastic, yet. But I am glad to learn how to design a website using Next.js - a build up from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Added a proper navigation bar and installed Fonts Awesome into the terminal to add icons!

Starting on week 5, I did not do much for the website nor the Arduino until the next day, March 23, where I was fixing the commenting system of my blog and finally was able to make it work on March 25 after an intense about of research, trial, and errors, just like when tinkering with electronics!

During March 24, I had fun interacting and creating motions with the Arduino Motorised Pinwheel project! Then on March 26, did not do much relating to DESN3600. Next was March 27, I spent the day designing my website using a whole new language from what I am used to before, but it was a great experience! Last but not the least, today is when I submit the blog for week 5 including a short video I made with the help of Aaron and Estelle recording me!