Published February 4, 2022 © GPL3+

Lane Tech PCL - Matthew Garcia: coaster dispenser

It dispenses coasters remotely to signal to a person they should use a coaster because people never use them even though they should.

IntermediateFull instructions provided4 hours41

Lane Tech PCL - Matthew Garcia: coaster dispenser

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Particle Argon

Digilent Stepper Motor

SparkFun button

Breadboard (generic)

Software apps and online services

Particle Build Web IDE

Blynk

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Hot glue gun (generic)

exacto knife

Scissor, Electrician

Story

I was doing a Home automation project for my PCL class and wanted to make a machine that dispensed coasters. The reason I wanted to do this was because I noticed how no one ever seems to use coasters and thought it they would be more fun if they came out of a machine. Even though my attempt you are about to read is kind of bad I still think the idea works.

First I tired to do a vertical design but I realized that due to the weight of my coasters and gravity it was unrealistic.

Failed designs

After that I went for a horizontal design to get around gravity and went for a conveyor belt.

1 / 2 • final sketch(adjust for your coasters and preferance)

Even though a conveyor belt is better that a vertical design I still ran into problems with the weight of every thing so my contraption never worked properly but the idea still stands and if you want to build one I would suggest either a stronger motor or more of them. Additionally I personally had to shrink down the size of the belt but that was due to the motor's strength.

On to building the machine though the first thing I did was work on the code to get the motor to turn from both a physical and online button. the physical button to get a coaster normally and a online button to be passive aggressive if a guest or someone is not using a coaster.

Blynk works

I also did all the wiring for the project with one jumper wire going to ground on the argon into the negative line of the breadboard, then a jumper wire from one pin of the button to the negative line of the breadboard, next one jumper wire from a pin on the other side of the button to D7 on the argon, then for the motor it is one male/female wire(grey) to the negative line of the breadboard and one male/female jumper wire(light grey) to the USB pin on the argon, lastly it is four male/female jumper wires(green, brown, yellow, blue) on the 1N1, 1N2, 1N3, 1N4 pins on the motor connected to D2, D3, D4, D5 in that order.

1 / 3 • Wires

Next I started to cut my cardboard first cut a 59in by 4in rectangle then realized it was too big and made it around 28 by 4in. Then I cut ridges into the cardboard about every inch for flexibility. Finally I put little pieces of cardboard every other section in-order to gain more traction. Lastly I hot glued the 2 ends together and made ridges down the middle of those 2 sections.

1 / 2 • conveyor belt

Next I made a + shape out of cardboard, hot glued that to the end of a old mechanical pencil and put that on to the end of the motor,

spin

Next you should make a L shape out of cardboard to put everything on and cut 2 holes in the side one to tape the motor to(see above image) and one to stick something to support the conveyor belt(I personally used a sizable cardboard tube I had. Then cut another piece of cardboard to match the other wall of the L and cut 1 hole in it to accommodate the support and slide it on. Finally make a back and with space to roof and leave space to insert coasters and leave the front open to dispense them.

1 / 3 • L

Here is a video of the conveyor belt turning (note: there is no coaster because mine were just too heavy but if you were to change up my design a bit you could probably get it to work much better than my dumb self can)

Note: the screech was my bird not the motor

Also here is a video that shows my thing not working because of my coasters being heavy and my craftsman ship probably was not the best

Failed attempt # 35ish

Automatic coaster

#define BLYNK_TEMPLATE_ID           "TMPLuOFa6xU2"
#define BLYNK_DEVICE_NAME           "Quickstart Device"
#define BLYNK_AUTH_TOKEN            "hjMPQOpOPcUOl3g-WNq7qcRhrxl8mYU_"

#include <blynk.h> //make sure this is after the define statements or else the code breakes for the Blynk app

// Comment this out to disable prints and save space
#define BLYNK_PRINT Serial

char auth[] = BLYNK_AUTH_TOKEN;

#include <Stepper.h>


const int stepsPerRevolution = 2048;

#define IN1 2
#define IN2 3
#define IN3 4
#define IN4 5

Stepper myStepper(stepsPerRevolution, IN1, IN3 , IN2, IN4);

int button = 7;

BLYNK_WRITE(V0)
{
  int value = param.asInt();

    Serial.println("counterclockwise");
    myStepper.step(-stepsPerRevolution);
    delay(500);
}

BLYNK_CONNECTED()
{
  Blynk.setProperty(V3, "offImageUrl", "https://static-image.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/general/fte/congratulations.png");
  Blynk.setProperty(V3, "onImageUrl",  "https://static-image.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/general/fte/congratulations_pressed.png");
  Blynk.setProperty(V3, "url", "https://docs.blynk.io/en/getting-started/what-do-i-need-to-blynk/how-quickstart-device-was-made");
}

void setup()
{
    myStepper.setSpeed(17);
    
    Serial.begin(115200);
    delay(5000);
    Blynk.begin(auth);

    pinMode(button, INPUT_PULLUP);
}

void loop()
{
  Blynk.run();
  
  int btnState = digitalRead(button);

	if ( btnState == LOW )
	{
	    Serial.println("counterclockwise");
        myStepper.step(-stepsPerRevolution);
        delay(500);
    	}
}

Credits

Matthew Garcia

1 project • 0 followers

Lane Tech PCL - Matthew Garcia: coaster dispenser

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Story

Code

Automatic coaster

Credits

Matthew Garcia

Comments

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Lane Tech PCL - Matthew Garcia: coaster dispenser

Lane Tech PCL - Matthew Garcia: coaster dispenser

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Software apps and online services

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Story

Code

Automatic coaster

Credits

Matthew Garcia

Comments

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