My granddaughters carousel

[Dwayne]

HI Dwayne you are a true engineer an a eletristion an does pwm signal stand for pusle width modulation signal ? an from the ( arduino ) what does that mean ? AN DO ?
an i bet your grandaughter thought all her chritmas's had come at once eh ? as all the workin in the merry go round is way out an beyond my know how brilliant work Sir an i'll show my wife jen when she gets up as no work due to lockdown as she loved it when she first see it
all best to you an yours PS an i bet you had fun soldering all those led's up to their resistors as i do a fair amount of this type of modderling on my warship models as i light them up for shows all working from R/C
chris an jen

Yes PWM is indeed pulse width modulation And the "Arduino" is a range of programmable boards which I will get to tonight It has various outputs (how many depends on the board you get) some are capable of PWM some are simple on/off and input/output.

[boatman]

Yes PWM is indeed pulse width modulation And the "Arduino" is a range of programmable boards which I will get to tonight It has various outputs (how many depends on the board you get) some are capable of PWM some are simple on/off and input/output.

HI Dwayne lookin forword to seeing this "Arduino" as if i can get one it may come in handy on my tiger build unless its a unit you have built specialy or can one be bought if so where please ?
chris

[Dwayne]

HI Dwayne lookin forword to seeing this "Arduino" as if i can get one it may come in handy on my tiger build unless its a unit you have built specialy or can one be bought if so where please ?
chris

I am quite shocked that I am introducing them to be honest, I haven't had chance to look through this site completely but would have put money on coming across them.
This pic shows the various ones I have floating around my workshop at the moment

with a ruler to show you the scale they are from largest to smallest Mega, uno and nano as you can see the nano in particular is really small (but not the smallest) and would fit into most projects with relative ease. They have analog input/outputs digital input/outputs and some PWM inputs/outputs.
programming them is not overly difficult if you have ever dabbled with programming but can look a little daunting if not.
These where all brought a while ago and they have improved the features available now built in wifi and bluetooth for example which would have been handy when my daughter wanted a Wrench cosplay mask :rolling:
As for purchasing them there are a number of places to get them From https://www.arduino.cc/ the people who developed them but as they are open source there are many clones available for much cheaper from the usual online vendors. The only thing to be careful of is some are supplied without the bootloader which can be a bit of hassle if your new to them.

[Mickc1440]

What a fabulous build and gift

[boatman]

WELL Dwayne ive got to admit this is too heavy for me an way out of my comfort zone so i'll leave it at that but brilliant work on the carousel
chris an jen

[Dwayne]

Ok so I had origionally intended to cram the electronics into the centre of the carousel but once I took into account the limited ways I had of fabricating them I decided to make a base with enough room instead. So I broke out the wallpaper steamer and bent another circle out of wood

Again I probably should have made it thinner first.
The electronics mostly consist of the Arduino uno, shift registers and transistor array drivers which I wont bore you with the details of but they where all soldered to the boards like so:

And again I ended up with a mess of wiring to sort out to feed the lights, motor and music

This picture shows a stage where I had intended to make the carousel battery operated but that was ditched in the end for an external power pack that plugs into the carousel due to the power requirements of everything.

[Dwayne]

So after this was all wired together and the few bugs where ironed out I came to the decision that the motor and gearbox from the cordles screwdriver would be almost impossible to run the carousel at the required speed this video shows it running as slow as I could get it without stalling and as you can see its far too fast so a new motor and gearbox was ordered.
Skipping a bunch of boring tweaks to programming etc I got close to finishing and needed to add a skirt to prevent my granddaughter getting her hand skewered by the bottom of the hanger as they went up and down

and all that was left was the tent canopy for the top of it which I dont seem to have any pictures for but its a plastic ring with some red and white fabric sewed onto it and thats the end of the build.
So all thats left is a link to the finished product Right here.

[monica]

What a fabulous build and gift ,and also very interesting well done,

[boatman]

WELL as i said Dwayne thats way beyond me on the eletronics i thought i had enough eletronics what will go into my tiger but nothing like you are useing
VERY WELL DONE SIR
chris an jen ps my wife jen had a god look at how you made it an she like me was amazed well done

[Dwayne]

Thank you Chris and Jen I am pleased you like it. My next project is a waltzer for my eldest grandson which is already underway and I will start a new thread for that one but obviousley the progress will be much slower. Having said that however I have much more machinery to help me with this one like mill, cnc router/laser and a 3d printer so progress should be much quicker than the carousel.

[JR]

Wow Dwayne thats some build, brilliant work allround. As soon as I saw the electronics I thought Chris will be over the moon.
I was when I read you streamed the base. well done Sir.

[Tim Marlow]

Fantastic work Dwayne. The engineering involved is complex, but you‘ve shown you are more than capable of working through it And getting a great result. Bring on the Waltzer......

[JR]

Don't know what TV area your all in but last night there was a very short segment about the sale of a hand built fair ground. Truly some great work, according to the auctioneers there was a bidding war and the whole lot went for £ 4000.

[boatman]

Wow Dwayne thats some build, brilliant work allround. As soon as I saw the electronics I thought Chris will be over the moon.
I was when I read you streamed the base. well done Sir.

YEA John i was pleased to see all the eletronics but havin a good look i realisied this eletronics is way over my head so each to his own on that but this carousel
is a work of a geninus very well done Dwayne an as Tim has said Bring on the Waltzer......
chris

[Dwayne]

Don't know what TV area your all in but last night there was a very short segment about the sale of a hand built fair ground. Truly some great work, according to the auctioneers there was a bidding war and the whole lot went for £ 4000.

I didn't see it unfortunatly, will have to look it up online.