Some time ago, my history teacher gave us an assignment to make a modern castle. It needed to have the elements of a medieval castle and modern amenities at the same time.
Since I am considerably experienced in the area of Arduino hardware and software, I decided to attempt a working drawbridge and portcullis. After all, what could be more impressive than a remote-controlled gate and door for a castle?
The first step was to set up the IR hardware. I had an existing Arduino remote control and also an IR receiver that could be applied nicely for this purpose.
The IR receiver had to be wired rather inconveniently using standard stripped wires to a breadboard.
Next was the portcullis. I utilized a pulley, a string with hook and a servo motor to achieve linear motion (up and down). I needed to find a perfect gear to connect to the servo so that I could pull the portcullis up and down as much as I wanted.
In the end, the breadboard was positively covered with wires. I used wire ties to secure and organize the wires a bit so that it was more pleasing to the eye. The Arduino was screwed down nice and tight for travel.
The IR receiver, secured using cardboard and wired using crocodile clips on two sides and a normal stripped wire in the middle. I had to secure this one with wired ties also to avoid confusion and short-circuits. There was one time that the entire Arduino heated up and I hastily removed the USB!
The drawbridge utilizes a simple cardboard piece mounted to the servo arm. Simplicity in this form allowed me to fix the numerous bugs that arose with more ease. And of course, the best part is that it still fulfilled its objective!
The entire set up could be powered by a standard 3-pin plug once the code was uploaded. To do that a computer was needed but I could do it before I headed off to school. Other methods included using a battery but I didn’t use that because of the high energy consumption of servo motors.
I’m happy to say that the presentation went nicely but the Arduino ran less smoothly than expected…. maybe that’s an improvement for next time? Stay tuned!
Thank you for reading my blog.
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