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Without wishing to steal Emp's thunder, I've been struggling with how to open a pair of butterfly valves for the heater air in the car footwell for ages now, and kept drawing a blank. I just want to turn them 90 degrees on or off, and mechanically it's a bit of a pain, with cables and bracket and all kinds of shit. So, I did what any sensible person would do, and gave it to a colleague to sort out. Surprisingly, he decided to reccomend a different route from the mechanical one. This is what he came back with:-
"I have found a method of controlling your butterfly control, all off Ebay, I have put the item numbers in, just copy and paste into the ebay search panel.
You need: 1 x Potentiometer such as – 300922908619 - £0.99
1 x Knob – 180994451101 - £0.99
1 x Arduino Nano board – 171095091836 - £12.18 or the Arduino Duemilanove – 221133730048 - £17.90
1 x 5v DC Servo, high torque – 261160068209 - £17.99
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It can be hard wired up, but I would bench test first by using a breadboard connector so that you can just poke the wires in, program it all up, before fitting to car. 390637914858 - £1.45
The Arduino board is a fantastic piece of kit. It can be programmed in seconds, see youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVZJy6OlwcA There are many tutorials on how to set up a servo with a potentiometer on youtube.
You just set the maximum parameters, in time, that you want the servo to operate within ie operate to the left from zero point for 3 seconds, to fully open the valve to demist, or to the right for 3 seconds to fully open valve for footwell, then when you turn the potentiometer, the servo follows and stops at any point between, that you release the knob. The potentiometer above is just an example, you probably already have one, or a slider would do. Quite a cheap setup which will suit I think. Have a look on Youtube though, there is loads of info."
I think it's prevarication time, possibly a bit of head-scratching, and no doubt some fannying around in the garage.
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The problem is I simply don't have the time to research and sort out the tech at the moment.
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
Well, I am a tenacious old thing, and I do like a challenge. In fact my son says that the only thing that ever beats me is a four-letter word called 'diet'.
I shall be investigating the Arduino solution this week, while I'm off work.