We picked up a magnetic foam shape kit, to make a fridge-mounted marble run. But picking up the marble after each run is such a drag - wouldn't it be fun if you could use your Crickit to help lift the ball back up and re-start the marble run?
With an electromagnet, we can pick up the stainless steel balls. A DC motor acts as a pulley, and a servo helps align the electromagnet so it can navigate around the foam.
You can DIY, as we did, using the two Circuit Playground Express buttons and switch to control the motors - or you could even automate the whole thing!
Wiring Diagram
Even though an electromagnet doesn't have 'direction' and thus could be controlled by a Drive pin, we opted for a Motor port because these electromagnets can draw up to 700mA and that's more than the Drive pin. But, you could almost certainly get away with using a Drive pin if you like!
Code!
Save to your CPX as code.py and press the CPX buttons to move the pulley up and down. Capacitive touch pads #1 and #4 twist the servo and then the switch enables and disables the electromagnet.
The most interesting part is smooth_move which is our gentle servo movement helper, it will carefully move the servo rather than jostling it and the magnet which would possibly cause the balls to fall.
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Page last edited January 22, 2025
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