moody07747
Member
So my brother has a school project for making motorized window blinds.
The school says you can buy anything that will turn non motorized blinds into motorized for any price and they will pay the students back.
We got custom blinds on order for our small window and we have a motor setup for closing the blinds where the rod normally would be used but we ran into a problem.
How to rig a motor to pull the string which makes the blinds go up and down.
I want to try stepper motors but my brother thinks micro kill switches and brushed motors on a 9 or 12VDC setup would be better.
I was thinking of mounting a pulley to the motor shaft and attaching the string to it and when it winds one way the blinds go up and down to the other way...
Now that pulley would have to be fairly big to hold the amount of string for a set of blinds that will be going down 30 inches so its like, how do I get that to fit in the top part of the blinds where the mechanics all are?
Now the rules don't say it all has to be contained but we would like it to look clean.
Were taking that latch out that normally holds the blinds open so the motor will have to hold that string at one position.
So, any ideas on how to get a motor to pull a string and hold it in position while trying to keep it in that top section?
Thanks
it looks like we will be going with a 12vDC battery powered setup.
edit,
I forgot to mention although it isn't that big of a deal...these blinds must open by themselves during the day and close at night via a photo cell...we may go with a 24hour timer though and there must be a button to override this timer.
The school says you can buy anything that will turn non motorized blinds into motorized for any price and they will pay the students back.
We got custom blinds on order for our small window and we have a motor setup for closing the blinds where the rod normally would be used but we ran into a problem.
How to rig a motor to pull the string which makes the blinds go up and down.
I want to try stepper motors but my brother thinks micro kill switches and brushed motors on a 9 or 12VDC setup would be better.
I was thinking of mounting a pulley to the motor shaft and attaching the string to it and when it winds one way the blinds go up and down to the other way...
Now that pulley would have to be fairly big to hold the amount of string for a set of blinds that will be going down 30 inches so its like, how do I get that to fit in the top part of the blinds where the mechanics all are?
Now the rules don't say it all has to be contained but we would like it to look clean.
Were taking that latch out that normally holds the blinds open so the motor will have to hold that string at one position.
So, any ideas on how to get a motor to pull a string and hold it in position while trying to keep it in that top section?
Thanks
it looks like we will be going with a 12vDC battery powered setup.
edit,
I forgot to mention although it isn't that big of a deal...these blinds must open by themselves during the day and close at night via a photo cell...we may go with a 24hour timer though and there must be a button to override this timer.
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