I got my H bridge IC a little while ago, but I've been a bit too lazy to get it going on my sun tracker. The whole sun tracker project is not really to my standards anyway. Using Lego is great and all, but there's just something about how it looks and functions that irks me. I've decided to cease progress on the sun tracker until a later date when my interest is restored.
Along with the H bridge, I got 4 N-channel MOSFETs. They're basically transistors that can be used to switch high-powered circuits. I've wanted some of these for a while, but so far I haven't had a real use for them. Also, I might have a problem using them on their own. It turns out that in order to switch a high load, the gate voltage must be greater than the drain-source voltage. This means that I might have to get a charge pump circuit in order to switch a high voltage circuit with a lower voltage. We shall see.
What I'm really excited about is that I also got a laser module! It's a 5mW class IIIa green laser. If it was class IV, then I probably wouldn't be able to purchase it. This thing is super bright, and it operates at 3 volts. Remember that CNC machine setup with the stepper motors? Well, I've re-purposed it into a laser light show machine. I attached small mirrors to the motor shafts, and I run the motors in tandem, back and forth with very little rotation. This results in a sort of mirror vibration, which I can control with the Arduino timing structures. The system is not fully functional right now and makes too much noise while vibrating, hence there will be no pictures until the next post. Hopefully I can get everything functioning correctly so I can produce laser light show patterns.
