Puck + Vibrating Motor

[espruino-discuss]

Posted at 2017-02-24 by champ

Hi! Got the puck a few days ago as my first attempt at trying to learn hardware (I'm a web/ios developer by trade). I'm loving it so far.

I've written an iOS app that serves as the Central to the Puck and is able to issue commands no problem. The next step in my project is controlling a vibration motor to alert the user of a notification.

So I bought this: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1201

I'm able to get it to vibrate by connecting the wires to the puck's GND and 3V pins, but I'm at a loss for how to control the vibration via code. Google didn't help much so here I am...

thanks!

[gfwilliams]

Posted at 2017-02-24 by @gfwilliams

Hi!

I'm afraid it looks like the motor draws around 60mA, which is too much for the Puck to output directly. You're going to need to add a transistor or FET to amplify the Puck's signal.

Adafruit themselves will have some good parts/suggestions. As a simple device that's massive overkill you could use this: https://www.adafruit.com/product/355

There should be smaller ones around, but that one will turn pretty much anything on or off from Puck.js :)

One thing to note is the CR2032 battery itself isn't meant to provide anywhere near 60mA - so while it might work, really you ought to use a bigger battery because it'll flatten itself in no time :)