Since much of the code to move everything was written for previous projects, things are moving along rapidly at the moment. There were a few things that need be fixed, primarily where previously written code was never actually used and so there were a few errors. With the addition of the motion of the head, all motion is now functioning as can be seen in the video. Now I need to get the person detector going. While I’ve never used this detector before it looks to be easy to use. Next step after that will be to refine the actual sequence to work as my sister specified. The final step will be the addition of the orbiting LEDs.

I reached a significant milestone with the Spinning Man today. All three parts now can spin at once. It is a relief to know that everything will operate through the spinning slip rings. The video below shows the firmware homing the bowl and the turntable, then it pauses for five seconds, starts the stirring, five second pause, start the bowl, five second pause, start the turntable. After some period, everything is stopped at once.

With the completion of the main board for the Stirring Man, the electronics for this project are now largely done. The photo shows the mechanism from the bottom. Once again I’ve used a PSoC5 as the controller and you can see the PSoC prototype board mounted on the main board. The stepper drive board is not yet mounted on the main board. An aluminum “spider” is used to support the sliprings centered over the turntable to feed the wiring from the main board to the turntable.

With the completion of the mainboard, it’s on to writing code. A good deal of this is already done, since I’ve used the stepper drivers, neo-pixels and the same servo in previous projects, so the low level code can be reused.