5. Electronics and Software - Automatic Sauté Machine

The electronics used for this mechanism included a 12V DC motor, 12V battery, Arduino Uno and high current motor shield. Using these parts, we wired the correct pins of the Arduino to the motor shield, input voltage and motor as shown below:

Originally, we thought that a smaller motor would be able to move the mechanism, however the resistance provided by the weight of the pan and links was too much for the smaller motor to overcome. Because of this problem, we had to upgrade our original motor shield to have a higher current rating to withstand the input of the 12V battery and supply the necessary current to the motor.

When the prototype was finished, the motor still had some trouble overcoming the weight of the pan, however it performed the desired motion with some help. Another challenge we faced involved finding the correct PWM to supply to the motor using Arduino code. We needed just enough power to overcome the resistance, however we also needed a slower motion for the sauté mechanism to perform as desired. In the end, we found a PWM value of 110/255 that gave us the optimal motion we needed. The Arduino code is as shown below:

void setup() {
 
  //Setup Channel A
  pinMode(8, OUTPUT); //Initiates Motor Channel A pin
  pinMode(7, OUTPUT); //Initiates Brake Channel A pin
 
}

void loop(){
 
  //forward @ full speed
  digitalWrite(8, HIGH); //Establishes forward direction of Channel A
  digitalWrite(7, LOW);   //Disengage the Brake for Channel A
  analogWrite(9, 100);   //Spins the motor on Channel A at full speed
 
  delay(5000);
 
  digitalWrite(7, HIGH); //Engage the Brake for Channel A

  delay(1000);
 
  digitalWrite(7, HIGH); //Engage the Brake for Channel A
 
  delay(1000);
 
}