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Crazy Arduino Automations
Crazy Arduino Automations Blog Raising the Bridge...Automation with Arduino: Design Update
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  • Author Author: colporteur
  • Date Created: 18 May 2023 3:06 PM Date Created
  • Views 2410 views
  • Likes 12 likes
  • Comments 14 comments
  • arduino automation
  • arduino
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Raising the Bridge...Automation with Arduino: Design Update

colporteur
colporteur
18 May 2023

My automation project has provided some challenges. I’m continuing to work at it, but I needed some design changes to accomplish raising and lowering the bridge automatically without failures.

It has been a while since the challenge was kicked off and an equal amount of time since I made my post. I am working to completing the project before the end of May. Other retirement stuff is taking up my time.

image

The current design divides the layout into four areas A, B, C, & D. The letter designation reference the island side area, B the ramp area, C the bridge area and D mainland side area for descriptions.

Each area has sensors and/or animation devices (i.e. motors, light and sound) referenced by the numbers.

A1: is a magnetic attached to a servomotor. Raising the magnetic stops the vehicle at the approach. The magnet triggers a reed switch in the vehicle to kill power.
A2: is a barrier raised and lowered by a servo.
B1: has a servo that raises and lowers the ramp.
B2: is a magnetic sensor triggered by an earth magnet attached to the ramp to detect if the ramp is up or down.
C1: is an IR sensor to stop the bridge on maximum rise.
C2: is a geared DC motor to raise and lower the bridge (the bride has left the building:))
C3: a magnetic sensor triggered by an earth magnet attached to the bridge to detect if the bridge is up or down.
D1: barrier on mainland side of bridge.
D2: vehicle stop magnet on mainland side of bridge.

My original plan was to use on one Arduino to animate the scenario of sound alarm with lights, lower the barriers, stop the bus, raise the ramp and raise the bridge. Then reverse the scenario. I have since added an Arduino dedicated to managing sensor readings and bridge movement.

I discovered during motor testing to raise and lower the bridge there are many things can go wrong. When little humans (i.e children) are involved a lot more can go wrong. Wrong would cause damage to the structures. To prevent things from going wrong, I added some sensors. The sensors provide feedback to establish logic that can control the bridge's action.

Given sufficient resources, I feel the complete animation could be done with one Arduino. Using Nano’s (i.e. what I have on hand) I have limited I/O pins. Added the additional Nano provided more I/O.

The extra Nano enabled me to divide the animation between two microcontroller devices. One controller is now responsible for the bridge motor guided by sensor readings, the other can look after the servos and playing sound.

I just completed the sensor installs. The other animation devices are in place and working. I have a scenario coding to raise and lower the bridge with the bridge coding section absent. I’ve just started work on coding the bridge up and down sequence. Hopefully without a catastrophic failure.

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  • beacon_dave
    beacon_dave over 2 years ago in reply to robogary

    Pneumatics might also be another approach. 

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  • robogary
    robogary over 2 years ago in reply to beacon_dave

    maybe the bridge can use a small rubber band belt with pulleys on the motor and mechanism to raise and lower the bridge. If someone plays with the bridge manually, the belt will allow mechanical slip with no damage. 

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  • Jan Cumps
    Jan Cumps over 2 years ago in reply to colporteur

    Would the current protection help? Can you set it to a value where it kicks in when there's more friction than needed to entertain the bridge?

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  • beacon_dave
    beacon_dave over 2 years ago in reply to colporteur

    If you drive the bridge rotation via a 4-bar linkage then you can limit the possible rotation to 90 degrees. You wouldn't need to reverse the motor as it would automatically start raising after it was fully lowered and start lowering after it was fully raised.

    It perhaps simplifies the control as you just keep driving the motor in the one direction until the appropriate limit switch has been reached.

    If you drive the output shaft through a spring coupling then if anyone tries lowering it manually against the motor it would just give and then spring back to the last motor driven position when released. If the limit switch is on the bridge side of the spring, then your code needs to take into account that it may have been activated in this manner as it would initially stop the motor but upon release, the bridge would no longer be in the lowered state so the motor would have to be turned back on to complete the lowering.

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  • DAB
    DAB over 2 years ago in reply to colporteur

    I would add a state machine with override capability should the state conditions become compromised.

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