custom kit

[mahatt]

Dear forum, engineers!

Teaching artist looking to put together affordable kit for high school students. Will order first one for me, then 10 for first group, then hopefully more.

What I need to make,
without knowing which parts, and how they fit together: ( I do understand basic circuitry and can solder)

Small motor (tiny affordable)
attaching to power source (battery)
attaching to couple shafts, gears (flexible number and strength, small is ok)
attaching gears to maybe cardboard, small objects (gluegun I guess)

What I'd like students to make of this:
A basic kinetic art objects where parts are moving. It doesn't matter how fast, and the parts need not be heavy.
Think, a couple of painted boards that rotate next to each other or maybe a small object rotating over a painted surface. This project is very flexible in nature and subject to experimentation during the process.

My question is: what do I need to buy in order to put this together? I know I can click and buy a tiny motor but that doesn't help me figure out how to put it together...anyone interested in helping me figure this out? I'd be incredibly grateful and I'll return to buy much more stuff!

Many thanks in advance,

Best,

just call me mahatt for now

[adafruit_support_mike]

For your mechanical parts, LEGO Mindstorms are probably the most widely available and respected ad-hoc robotics construction platform. They show up in a surprising number of Masters and PhD research projects.

WRT building the circuits and controlling the motors, take a look at lessons 13 and 15 from Simon Monk's "Learning Arduino" series:

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-ard ... -dc-motors
https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-ard ... -reversing

Those show the most basic methods for motor control, and the parts are inexpensive.

A microcontroller isn't strictly necessary, but it's a handy way to generate lots of on/off signals with arbitrary timing in a small amount of space. We have a fairly wide range of boards, but the best choice for cost-conscious beginners would probably be the Metro Mini:

https://www.adafruit.com/products/2590

It's based on the same reference design as the Arduino Uno, so almost all existing Arduino code will work on it without any modification. It also has the same USB connection between the board and the computer, so programming it and using it with a computer is fairly easy.

(BTW - the Arduino IDE is based on the same underlying code as Processing http://www.processing.org/ which presents a higher-level abstraction of interaction between a computer and programmable hardware. The Arduino IDE is about putting firmware on the chip, Processing is about moving information between the computer and the programmable device while the device is running).

Byeond that, look at our Starter Packs for an idea of the kind of hardware that's most convenient to have when you start working with microcontrollers:

https://www.adafruit.com/?q=starter%20pack

Also look at Ladada's Electronics Toolkit for the things you'll find yourself using all the time:

https://www.adafruit.com/products/136

[mahatt]

Hello Mike,
Thank you for your effort in responding to my issue, but your suggestions are too expensive and/or too advanced for what I need at this point. But, it's great that you make a controller for only $15.

If you'd still like to help, please consider this:

A simple motor that I can attach to a battery box would be the base. Then, if you have some cool gears, sprockets or the like, so that students can attach something of their own creation to this motor to create movement that would be great. For instance sprockets that turn movement from horizontal to vertical. From what I see these companies sell a lot of separate small parts that may fit my project, but it's just a sea of unknown stuff to me at this point. That is why I contacted you to get a suggestion for a custom kit. Yes, I realize this would take some extra thinking on your part, but you would be thinking a lot better than I can at this point. I'd be spending eons of time ordering randomly for stuff that doesn't fit together.

Your creativity would be appreciated.

Simple and open ended would be the clue. Simple, so I can get everyone on board. Open ended so that different concepts and form factors can be accommodated.
All the best, hope to hear from you,

mahatt

[adafruit_support_bill]

The Mindstorms electronics parts are fairly expensive and there are many less expensive options for those. But for the mechanical parts, it is hard to beat their modular building system. Lego sells a few different 'gear and axle' kits. These include a variety of gears, axles and related parts that all work together. And it is not difficult to mate them to other non-Lego motors and other parts.

For a low-cost motor, we have these:
https://www.adafruit.com/products/711
We also have these with a built-in gear train to reduce things to a more usable speed.
https://www.adafruit.com/products/2941

[mahatt]

Many thanks, I'll try your suggestions!

Best,

the newbie