Summary of Special Study

Stage One:

For stage one, I have constructed a rotating turntable. I have succeeded in this because I have managed to construct a very stable turntable. In addition, I have also added a laser and light sensor to the platforms to reset the co-ordinations just in case the co-ordination values over shoot the maximum value.

To begin with, I had researched into the ways in which I could construct a turntable. I then decided to build the whole thing and use a stepping motor to get the turntable to rotate.

In order to successfully complete this stage of the special study, I would like to thank my tutors, Spencer and Jay, and also to Andy (Master's Student) for their suggestions and recommendations. I would also like to thank Simon from the workshop department at the University of Huddersfield, who cut out my boards for me and also for the metal clog cutout and filing the top end of the stepping motor.

With all the suggestions and recommendations made by Spencer, Jay and Andy, I put all the ideas together to build the turntable.

The second bit of this stage was to make a circuit board that is used to communicate between the Arduino Program, Arduino board and the stepping motor. I used 4 relays that represented each step equalling to 4 steps. Once I had the breadboard working successfully. I used a soldering iron to soldered the wires and relays in place on a stripboard in order to make the circuit permanent.

This bit was the electronic side to my special study and I enjoyed soldering considering it was my first experience. I got the hang of it and managed to complete this bit in one day and at a later date then deciding to add the laser and light sensor, I soldered these into place too without a problem.

Problems Encountered:

The only problem I had during this stage was to somehow balance and hold the weight of the projector on the turntable and to run smoothly. Ball-bearings was the answer to this. I therefore, I planned and experimented the different ways in which I could place the ball-bearings which causing a lot of friction. In the end, the most successful idea was to create a ring-track in which I would place the ball-bearings. I used 78 12mm ball-bearings to form a single line ring around the centre of the stepping motor.

Stage Two:

Stage Two of the special study is the coding, getting the turntable to follow instructions by rotating to specific co-ordinations and stopping. Playing an animation and wait for the next instructions.

The first bit of coding was to get the turntable to rotate. This was completed successfully when I first started working on the first stage of the special study.

The second bit of coding was to get the turntable to display co-ordinations and setting the specific co-ordinations. After this, the next bit of coding was to load the animations when the turntable has reached to the specific co-ordination. This was controlled by 'Mouse Click' functions.

Once I had achieved this, I decided to have the turntable rotating whilst playing some of the animations. For the other animations, the turntable would rotate to the specific co-ordination and then play the animations.

This was the third and final bit of coding completed in order to get the turntable to rotate whilst playing animations and also to stop and then play animations.

Problems Encountered:

The main problem I had with this stage was the jittering caused due to the magnets in the relays used on my circuit. However, this was solved by replacing the relays with a stepping motor controller drive IC. Although, I was just replacing the relays with this one chip, I had to re-wire and re-solder the whole circuit in order to get it to work again. During my first attempt, I fried the IC chip and also the main power supply and therefore had to replace both of these. But during my second attempt, everything was working successfully.

Even after the new circuit was in place, I still got slight jittering. However, this time it was very little compared to before. But I managed to track this down to the ball-bearings as I had experienced this problem towards the end of stage one. At one point of the special study, I had removed the ball-bearings as the turntable was working fine. However at this point, the ball-bearings needed to be in place to be able to hold and balance the weight of the projector and to run smoothly. Once the ball-bearings were back in place, the jittering stopped and the turntable was working fine.

I'd say that coding is not one of my strengths, however, I have learnt and gained a lot of knowledge of coding and how it works and also the basic knowledge of electronics.