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• Lessons Learned

  John Opsahl • 03/01/2020 at 17:02 • 0 comments

  The stealth chop stepper motor driver and addressable RGB LEDs were technologies of this project that I had never worked with before. I was really impressed by how silent the stepper motor ran using the stealth chop driver. In fact, the only noise during operation is the rubbing between the linear axis cable rail and and the enclosure wall; something that can be avoided by making the enclosure a little wider. The addressable LEDs were just ridiculously fun to control with an Arduino. I also enjoyed learning about LED gamma correction that is used to achieve better human perceptible color contrast.
  

  The only things I would change if I was going to build this again are the 12V power supply AC wire routing and the mechanical connection between the LED strip cart and linear axis. At the moment the AC wires are routed directly over the Arduino Nano micro controller and stepper motor driver. I am a little surprised that this hasn't caused any signal noise issues. My best guess is that the AC currents are low enough to not be an issue. Also, with the current design it is not possible to move the LED strip across the full length of the linear axis in less than 15 seconds without significant oscillation of the LED strip. Stiffening the mechanical connection between the LED strip cart and the linear axis will reduce oscillations at higher speeds. Ideally, the LED strip would move across in less than 10 seconds to be more in line with the camera exposure capabilities of most smart phones.

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