The circuit consists of four optical sensors running to the Feather's pins 12, 10, 9, and 6, and a Motor FeatherWing to drive the stepper motor. A 12VDC power supply runs into the FeatherWing via an inline switch for easy pause/play action.
Solder male header pins underneath the Feather as shown here. These will be used to connect the Feather to the FeatherWing Tripler.
This guide covers the details of Feather pin soldering in depth.
Solder in the Terminal blocks and male header pins under the Motor FeatherWing (unless you bought the pre-soldered version).
Use two short lengths of wire to connect the DC power breakout positive voltage + to Motor FeatherWing power input + and the DC power breakout ground (-) to Motor FeatherWing power input ground.
Assemble the FeatherWing Tripler in the usual way (as shown here) with female header sockets. Then, add an additional strip for the 3.3V and GND strips as shown here. These will make it easy to plug in the four optical sensors without running out of power/ground sockets.
If you want to be fancy (and who doesn't), use color coded headers!
An optical reflective sensor is a composite electronic device with two elements - an IR LED and an IR photo-transistor. The IR LED blasts light, and when something bounces the light back to the photo-transistor, the transistor turns on and the amount of current flowing through it increases.
This makes the sensor great at detecting when something is in front of the sensor, such as a LEGO head to trigger a MIDI drum! when nothing is there the IR light never gets reflected back and the transistor stays off.
Use 4 M2.5 x 10mm nylon screws to connect two LEGO Technic 1x6 with holes bricks as shown.
Press fit the shaft to axle adapter -- this will probably require the removal of a bit of plastic inside the coupling shaft -- a hobby knife works pretty well for this.
Then, screw the four wires into the Motor FeatherWing terminal blocks as shown.
Text editor powered by tinymce.
