Arduino Motorized Roller Blinds
DESCRIPTION
Project details: The purpose of my project is to make a practical motorized roller blinds, in which I can use every day. The plan is to make a roller blind controlled through a bipolar stepper motor in which, I will control through an arduino uno board. After the blinds work functionally through the motor, I hope to connect it to a Bluetooth receiver on the arduino in which I can control with a remote. Later I will set the blinds to a timer in which it opens in the morning but closes at night. I intend on learning how to control a motor through an arduino board, and learn the software involved with it.
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- Bipolar stepper motor (byj48)
- Motor driver
- fm jumper wires
- mm jumper wires
- Arduino uno board
- 3d printed parts
- vinyl sheet for blinds
- 3/4 in pvc pipe
- First cut the PVC pipe to desired length (I cut mine to 2.5 feet in order to fit my window size)
- Next cut the pipe in horizontal line with a table saw all the way through the pipe
- Hem the top and bottom of the vinyl sheet to make a 1/2 inch loop
- I then inserted a 3/8 inch wooden dowel to hold the vinyl sheet up, and slide the sheet through
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- I 3d printed a motor case, and knob insert, in order to allow for the blinds to rotate with the motor, and to improve the aesthetic appeal of the project
- I made a twist knob for the side the motor would be on, but a tube insert for the other side in which I attached a bearing the size of the PVC pipe diameter.
- Download the arduino ide software onto your desktop
- Then open up the software and click on the file tab, then examples, and follow it down to the example titled "stepper", and click on stepper one revolution.
- For this particular code you will need to change the steps per revolution to fit your motor, and you can figure that out by this following equation
steps = Number of steps in One Revolution * Gear ratio .
steps= (360°/5.625°)*64"Gear ratio" = 64 * 64 =4096 . this value will substitute it on The arduino Sketch
- You also will need to change the step sequence on the software from 1234 to 1324, otherwise the motor will not run
- you can also play around with the speeds if needed to fit your needs
- The parts you will need for this sketch, is an arduino breadboard, a 5v breadboard power supply, a Ir receiver, and remote control
- The schematic used of the circuit, and all of the wiring came from brainy bits
- The code needed to run the motor through the receiver will use two libraries in the arduino sketch, IR remote and stepper
- The stepper library will be under examples in the arduino sketch, but you will need to download and extract the IR remote from a website such as GitHub
Overall the project did not turn out the way I wanted to. I wanted a fully autonomous roller blind that I could mount in my room in a practical manner. Although I learned a lot and it is not a complete failure, as it partially works, I am going to try and fix the mistakes I made. I am going to replace the byj48 stepper motor, and stepper driver with a more powerful nema 17 stepper motor along with a a4988 stepper driver. I hope with some modifications in the hardware, and software that I will be able to have a fully functioning stepper motor powered roller blinds.