[sudo-discuss] Door hacking

[Jake]

> I see. That's what I would have assumed, except you said "all it does is
> trigger the latch release solenoid, but it's still using this super-fancy
> motor control shield," which made it sound like the latch release solenoid
> was complicated enough that it needed to be driven by a fancy motor shield.

we were using the motor shield originally because A. it was handy and B. it was
perfect for controlling the door-latching motor that was on the original doors,
especially since it has a current-sensing feature where it feeds the value of
current consumed to the analog inputs of the arduino.  that was I was able to
have the software stop when the door latch reached its final position (and the
motor stalled and current went above the maximum threshold)

but then when we got the new door, it just had the latch and i just hooked it
up to the same wires and ripped most of the software out to just hit the latch.

>> http://www.avdweb.nl/Article_files/Solarbike/Motor-controller/4-Pole-brushless-DC-motor-animation.jpg
>>
> This sounds like fun, and I'm interested in helping with it, including
> working on firmware for it.

ok, i'm just wiring up the hardware now and figuring out how it works, but you
can go ahead and start writing the motor program.  i'm just not sure yet how
the hall-effect sensors from the motor are supposed to work, but i might figure
that out tonight i suppose.

>> all you need to do is get the RFID code that Henner wrote to compile in
>> arduino, and i can do the rest.  what do you think of that?
>>
> This sounds like you're leaving me the boring part. I think it's silly to
> port it to arduino and I am not interested in working on this in the way
> you've described.

well i think it's silly to keep everything in a complicated toolchain and
manage makefiles when i can use a simple IDE to shoot a program into the board
through the serial port, which i can do over ssh.. so i definitely want the
program to be able to be uploaded over serial.

> How about we agree on a pinout for the 168P and I write the firmware while
> you work out the motor hardware, since you've already started on it?

the pinout can be whatever you want.  I just need to keep probably two or three
of the PWM pins for the motor controlling.

> Then we can get together at a later date, perhaps this coming Tuesday, and
> see what we've got. We can reapportion labor as necessary.

ok sounds good, i'll try to get the hardware done by then.  i already have the
power supply connector finished and it might be ready to drive the motor by
tonight.

so i might make a "hello world" to try to turn the motor...

> Not sure why this private thread ended up on sudo-discuss, btw.

because i thought more people in the hackerspace should be aware of and
interested in what we're doing.

-jake