Michael Dushkoff
This is a starting gate for a line following competition in which two cars are held up by a stepper motor and then released at the same time. A transmission signal is sent through an antenna to alert the ending line that the race timer should start and will only stop when the tripwire is broken.
About
This program is intended to start two cars at the same time from a starting gate rig that uses a stepper motor to control the release of the cars. Two buttons control the release mechanism and once the cars are released, a signal is sent through an antenna to the ending gate rig which tells it to start its timers. This is specifically made for this application only and uses the custom mMotor library to drive a 5718m-05e-05 stepper motor.
Hardware
The circuit diagram is given below. Vs should be external to the mbed since the mbed can not provide enough current to drive the stepper motor.
Circuit diagram constructed using CircuitLab.
Usage
The starting gate is controlled by two separate buttons which cause the gate to release or reset based on which button is pressed. The buttons themselves can only be pressed once before pressing the opposite button to prevent the gate from going too far in either direction.