I love the reaction wheel idea but that is not what I had in mind. That is a beautiful demonstration by the way.
What I was thinking was to make the actual giro sensor out of a spinning hard drive motor and it's platters. Twist a spinning disk around an axis at right angles to it's axis of spin and it will produce a torque reaction about the axis perpendicular to both of those. So we only need to mount the thing on a "hinge" and confine it's movement with springs. Then the rate of twist will produce a proportional movement against those springs. We can measure that with some inductive motion sensor or even just a pot.
Heater,
OK, I get it.
In that inverted pendulum spike project you could have the spinning gyroscope acting as the motion sensor to control the reaction wheels.
At the moment the motion sensor is an IMU chip.
Pretty cool, 3 spinning wheels on a spike!
I pulled this from an old HD, and I'm not sure how the motor was applied now. But the weight of the platters combined with significant speed would make a decent gyroscope. Manufacturers put a lot of expence in the blossoming technology.
I built this circuit in 2016, here's a video of it working:-
I actually removed 2n3906 and 2n3904 transistors, and put a 10k variable resistor on the gate of the mosfet to output pin 6 on 741 op amp, to control the speed, works a treat.
recently I have gotten back into project building and found a use for the cct, there are other ways to spin hdd motors but i think this cct is still neat
here are some latest pics:-
Comments
Are you thinking of something like this project?
It uses reaction forces, but the idea is similar;
http://hackaday.com/2016/08/11/stick-balances-itself-with-reaction-wheels/
What I was thinking was to make the actual giro sensor out of a spinning hard drive motor and it's platters. Twist a spinning disk around an axis at right angles to it's axis of spin and it will produce a torque reaction about the axis perpendicular to both of those. So we only need to mount the thing on a "hinge" and confine it's movement with springs. Then the rate of twist will produce a proportional movement against those springs. We can measure that with some inductive motion sensor or even just a pot.
That is how gyros were made before we had MEMS chips to do it for us. See this nice model helicopter gyro picture: http://www.rchelicopterfun.com/rc-helicopter-gyro.html
It is actually a very different idea. The spinning masses are the sensor not the actuator.
OK, I get it.
In that inverted pendulum spike project you could have the spinning gyroscope acting as the motion sensor to control the reaction wheels.
At the moment the motion sensor is an IMU chip.
Pretty cool, 3 spinning wheels on a spike!
Bit spendy but I want one.
http://gyroscope.com/d.asp?product=SUPER2
I want one too, but haven't checked the price yet.
EDIT: 85 pounds sterling, sounds pricey without knowing the conversion. Hook that up to a brushless hard disc motor, may go for over an hour.
I want it all !
Thanks for the correction, I got my info from a Google app. Still a good price for a quality product.
Hi All,
I built this circuit in 2016, here's a video of it working:-
![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/NQUNRebnKM4/0.jpg)
I actually removed 2n3906 and 2n3904 transistors, and put a 10k variable resistor on the gate of the mosfet to output pin 6 on 741 op amp, to control the speed, works a treat.
recently I have gotten back into project building and found a use for the cct, there are other ways to spin hdd motors but i think this cct is still neat
here are some latest pics:-
and