Adventures in Arduino

ONE WAY OF making your projects more dynamic is by introducing movement. When you add movement to a project it can feel as if you’ve actually brought it to life. This adventure will show you how, by working with a servo motor and adding switches to your circuits.

In this adventure, you will start by finding out about the new components you are going to work with, then use those components to build a fantastic combination safe, which only opens when you turn all the potentiometers to their secret positions and push the button. If you know the right combination, the safe opens automatically. The safe is constructed from cardboard, so won’t withstand a brute force attack, but it can be used to deter parents from getting inside!

What You Need

You will be using a new actuator, which is a fancy word for an object that takes an electrical signal and then does something in the real world. You have already used one type of actuator in Adventures 1 and 2: the LED. It takes electricity and turns it into light. In this adventure, you use a motor that takes electricity and turns it into motion.

An actuator translates an electrical signal into a real-world modifies action such as light, sound or movement.

The opposite of an actuator is a sensor, and you will be using a new one of those ...