A Continuous Rotation Servo

A Continuous Rotation Servo

continuous rotation servo
continuous rotation servo

If the granite grinding stone is going to spin, you're going to need a "continuous rotation" servo. You order one from Adafruit.

Unlike the servo driving your Detour Guy's flag, this one will go around in circles.

Here's Limor "Lady Ada" Fried demonstrating the unit.

It will also require some new code, like so:

// create servo object to control a continuous servo -- the Taza Spin the Grinding Wheel servo.
Servo myservo;

// NEW LINES HERE!   ******************************************************************
// DC: you can play with these values so the wheel turns/stop
const int servoStop = 88; //was 92 at Taza. Floats right there.
const int servoMovingRight = 180;

// this function gets executed once, when the photon boots up
void setup()
{
  // attaches the servo on the D0 pin to the servo object
  myservo.attach(D0);

  // function to make the Taza wheel move
  Particle.function("moveit", moveit);

  // make the servo move to its initial position when the photon boots up
  myservo.write(servoStop);
}

// this function gets executed continuously, as long as the photon has power
void loop()
{
  // since there is nothing to execute, the photon will remain idle, looking at us 
  // until we decide to hit one of its cloud functions, like moveit()
}

// NEW LINES HERE!   ******************************************************************
// DC: you can play with this value so the wheel turns as long as wanted
const int turnDelay = 5000;

int moveit(String dummy)
{

  Particle.publish("Moving the Taza wheel!", "boom", 60, PRIVATE);

  // the servo should be already at the initial position, but just in case
  myservo.write(servoMovingRight);
  delay(turnDelay);
  myservo.write(servoStop);

  return 0;
}

You can also check the code out on GitHub

Previous - Lucky Break #2

Next - Taza 2 dot O