First project ever and need help!

To start i'm 15 and this is my first project that I have sat down and actually planned out. Also please note I have little to no programming skills. My plan is to build a vending machine that is powered by an arduino board. The arduino would power servo motors that would then dispense the item. My question is where do I even start. What kind of motors should I get? Can the arduino even run several motors? How can I make this connectable to an outlet? (not battery powered). What equipment do I need? I have so many questions I could write book. Any design tips and help I can get would be great. Also any design changes you think would make the idea more efficient do share.Thanks.

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0 gadget.iom over 10 years ago in reply to Former Member

The speed would be an issue. If directly connected to the motor your coil would spin 1700 times a minute, resulting in a dispensing rate of 28 items per second. A vending machine gun.
You would need some kind of gearbox to reduce the speed to a sensible ratio.
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0 gadget.iom over 10 years ago in reply to Former Member

You could take some inspiration from Jan Cumps in his article: [Christmas Wreath of Things] Internet of Holiday Lights: part 5 - Stepper Motor works.
This approach only uses two I/Os from the Arduino and gives you more flexibility over the voltage of your stepper motor.
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0 Former Member over 10 years ago in reply to gadget.iom

I will keep searching for a high toqrue motor with board then. Good to know.
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0 gadget.iom over 10 years ago in reply to Former Member

See if you have any surplus electronics stores in your area. Most big cities seem to have them, or a store that includes a surplus section.
Unfortunately the Isle of Man is lacking in such a place, but I was in Montreal last month and there was one there. Sooooo tempted to fill my suitcase.
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0 iexpress over 10 years ago

Sounds like a good project. There could be two different types of motors you can use, Servo or Step Motors. Servos are continuous, while Step Motors are more accurate and have X amount of steps per revolution. Perhaps the snacks could be aligned so that one turn of the motor spindle would be enough to make the snack fall off.

You could use a any Arduino pin as an input, say for sensing a coin, and even taking user input from a keypad. Some blank keypads have 8 pins, 16 buttons. 4 are used to supply voltage to, and 4 are used to read voltage level from. Most of the time, checking the pins for HIGH level is good enough for the MCU to take action.

I'd say you could probably get a hardware controller circuit board working in about a week or two if you're starting from scratch. There are also coin receptors you can buy that send out clock pulses when coins are inserted to tell you what denomination went in the slot.

Sure would be interesting to make your own machine. I was thinking on doing something similar, like an automated toothpick dispenser. Only one motor might be needed for that though. Hope this helps some.
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