Created September 28, 2015

Cat & Birds Automata + Arduino LED Button

Laser Cut Gear Automata

BeginnerFull instructions provided696

Cat & Birds Automata + Arduino LED Button

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Arduino UNO

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Laser cutter (generic)

Story

The goal was to create a Cabaret Mechanical Theater type automata that used a combination of linkages and/or gears to perform a set of movements. The automata could be hand powered or servo driven and must be humorous or cause wonder. It should be laser cut using any type of material (cardboard, matboard, acrylic or wood).

Learning from my classmate's projects and my experience laser cutting a set of gears last week (similar to the cabaret mechanical theater style), I made sure to provide a guide for my cams and laser cut a lot of extra holes. The additional holes gave me the flexibility to explore my idea without having to print extra parts.

1 / 2

Design evolution

I am happy with the way my project turned out, since the cat and birds both rotate on their own as well as moving up and down. The tree provided a nice backdrop and the cam guides worked very well.

I would like to attach a string to the additional unused gear. In a future iteration, I would like to use the string to power something that interacts with the tree.

The following are the Arduino examples which use a button to control the LED.

As seen in the video, example 1 worked as expected.

The button is meant to toggle the light on and off (if the light is on, the button should turn it off and vice versa). However, in the example pressing the button produces random results. The button does not control the LED as expected since the Arduino code cycles through many iterations of on and offs during the short time that we hold down the button.

This time the LED and button work as expected!

The code for example 3 is an improvement from before since it stores the state of the button and checks whether a transition occurred.

I had a hard time figuring out how to wire the breadboard to make it work. In the end I found that I had a few loose connections, and making sure that everything is secure solved most of my problems. The great thing is that the wiring can be used for all three examples, which reduces the amount of possible errors in the later examples.

// Turn on LED while the button is pressed
// Massimo Banzi, from "Getting Started with Arduino"

const int LED = 13;   // the pin for the LED
const int BUTTON = 7; // the input pin where the
                      // pushbutton is connected
int val = 0;          // val will be used to store the state
                      // of the input pin

void setup() {
  pinMode(LED, OUTPUT);   // tell Arduino LED is an output
  pinMode(BUTTON, INPUT); // and BUTTON is an input
}

void loop(){
  val = digitalRead(BUTTON); // read input value and store it

  // check whether the input is HIGH (button pressed)
  if (val == HIGH) {
    digitalWrite(LED, HIGH); // turn LED ON
  } else {
    digitalWrite(LED, LOW);
  }
}

// Press button to turn on LED, press again to turn off, innocent version
// Massimo Banzi, from "Getting Started with Arduino"
const int LED = 13; // the pin for the LED 
const int BUTTON = 7; // the input pin where the
                                    // pushbutton is connected
int val = 0;                    // val will be used to store the state
                                    // of the input pin
int state = 0;                // 0 = LED off while 1 = LED on

void setup() {
  pinMode(LED, OUTPUT);     // tell Arduino LED is an output
  pinMode(BUTTON, INPUT); // and BUTTON is an input
}

void loop() {
  val = digitalRead(BUTTON); // read input value and store it

  // check if the input is HIGH (button pressed)
  // and change the state
  if (val == HIGH) {
    state = 1 - state;
  }

  if (state == 1) {
    digitalWrite(LED, HIGH); // turn LED ON
  } else {
    digitalWrite(LED, LOW);
  }
}

// Only change LED state on button transition
// Massimo Banzi, from "Getting Started with Arduino"
const int LED = 13;   // the pin for the LED
const int BUTTON = 7; // the input pin where the
                      // pushbutton is connected
int val = 0;     // val will be used to store the state
                 // of the input pin
int old_val = 0; // this variable stores the previous
                 // value of "val"
int state = 0;   // 0 = LED off and 1 = LED on

void setup() {
  pinMode(LED, OUTPUT);   // tell Arduino LED is an output
  pinMode(BUTTON, INPUT); // and BUTTON is an input
}
void loop(){
  val = digitalRead(BUTTON); // read input value and store it
                             // yum, fresh

 // check if there was a transition
 if ((val == HIGH) && (old_val == LOW)){
   state = 1 - state;
 }

 old_val = val;  // val is now old, let's store it

 if (state == 1) {
   digitalWrite(LED, HIGH); // turn LED ON
 } else {
   digitalWrite(LED, LOW);
 }
}

Credits

Jennifer Chen

13 projects • 12 followers

Cat & Birds Automata + Arduino LED Button

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Story

Code

Example 1:

Example 2:

Example 3:

Credits

Jennifer Chen

Comments

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Cat & Birds Automata + Arduino LED Button

Cat & Birds Automata + Arduino LED Button

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Story

Code

Example 1:

Example 2:

Example 3:

Credits

Jennifer Chen

Comments