Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Control Motors with Your Muscles!
We need help. The kids have the programming for the Myoware 2.0 but we can't figure out the hookups to get muscles to turn the motor. We have hookups for the muscles to the arduino shield and hookups for the motor to the arduino red board, but how do we connect the arduino and the shield when the cords go in the red board where the shield should go?

Moderator note: Project: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... le-sensors

Hello,

Did you click the links to either Advancer Technologies or SparkFun Electronics in the project? This is an "abbreviated" project idea on our site, meaning we do not have the complete instructions on the Science Buddies website. You will need to access the third-party instructions from Advancer or SparkFun for the complete wiring diagrams and connections, and contact them directly for support if needed.

We do have many other Arduino projects on our site with complete wiring diagrams and our own kits, and we are able to provide more direct support for those.

Thanks,

Ben Finio, PhD
Lead Staff Scientist
Science Buddies

Yes we checked out all the links, and as a teacher with an engineer helping, we are stuck. We now have power going to all the parts and the motor is vibrating but not turning. I guess they have to look at the coding now. We used a video where a person got a motor to turn, but she was only using batteries so we are not sure why the muscles don't start the program she was using. I will see what help Myoware can provide, thank you!

Ok - we do have our own very extensive Arduino tutorial series in case you haven't seen that. It doesn't include the Myoware sensors specifically but covers things like motors:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlBV ... D1yZmSAgaB

Debugging Arduino projects can be hard because when the whole project "doesn't work," it isn't obvious which individual part of the project is preventing the whole thing from working. The general procedure for debugging is to isolate subsystems and test them one at a time. For example, in this case you could test the sensor on its own (without trying to control a motor) and just print the sensor output to the serial monitor. You can also test the motor on its own (just write code to turn it on and off, like you would blink an LED, without relying on the sensor input). That helps you make sure individual parts of your circuit are working. When debugging code, serial print is very useful for seeing what your code is doing (for example, which part of an if/else statement is activating).

Hope that helps!