moody07747
Member
About a month ago my brother came home from school and they had given him a project to build.
The project was simple, motorize some window blinds.
- Wand must be removed
- There must be a manual control panel
- The project must open and close as the sun rises and falls throughout the day.
We got off to a slow start but eventually finished with a week to go.
Here are some photos:
**broken link removed**
The inside of the bottom box houses a bread board, basic stamp, 12 and 6VDC batteries, about a mile of cables lol, A few spikes (relays), and a motor/trans from an old power wheels car.
The upper box has a few wires and a motor to open and close the blinds, (normally done with the wand.)
I didn't have time to snap a pic of the wired insides as we were working into the night and this morning my brother just left early to take it to the school.
The main panel is the main controls. With the labels is easy to figure out what they do.
The upper row with single red button and adjuster knob adjust the threshold of the light sensor which is mounted in the back.
The window is a 30" x 13" escape window with some custom brackets I welded up out of some 1/8" angle iron. Blinds are a custom cheapo set from Blinds To Go...only cost us $20 and they shipped them out within a few days.
The closing week was tough, problems just kept popping up and switches would not work randomly. Turns out we needed a few changes including a few bigger batteries, new photo cell, and a few adjustments to the codes.
That had us working two more full days but it was worth it in the end if ya ask me.
He's going to keep it at the school for a week and then when they have the project show the schools will get together and we will see which one wins.
After that they normally put the projects in the basement for storage which the students go into for parts for other projects.
project total cost for the window was about $100...maybe just under...school pays us back for anything we got though.
The project was simple, motorize some window blinds.
- Wand must be removed
- There must be a manual control panel
- The project must open and close as the sun rises and falls throughout the day.
We got off to a slow start but eventually finished with a week to go.
Here are some photos:
**broken link removed**
The inside of the bottom box houses a bread board, basic stamp, 12 and 6VDC batteries, about a mile of cables lol, A few spikes (relays), and a motor/trans from an old power wheels car.
The upper box has a few wires and a motor to open and close the blinds, (normally done with the wand.)
I didn't have time to snap a pic of the wired insides as we were working into the night and this morning my brother just left early to take it to the school.
The main panel is the main controls. With the labels is easy to figure out what they do.
The upper row with single red button and adjuster knob adjust the threshold of the light sensor which is mounted in the back.
The window is a 30" x 13" escape window with some custom brackets I welded up out of some 1/8" angle iron. Blinds are a custom cheapo set from Blinds To Go...only cost us $20 and they shipped them out within a few days.
The closing week was tough, problems just kept popping up and switches would not work randomly. Turns out we needed a few changes including a few bigger batteries, new photo cell, and a few adjustments to the codes.
That had us working two more full days but it was worth it in the end if ya ask me.
He's going to keep it at the school for a week and then when they have the project show the schools will get together and we will see which one wins.
After that they normally put the projects in the basement for storage which the students go into for parts for other projects.
project total cost for the window was about $100...maybe just under...school pays us back for anything we got though.