I am creating an automatic blind opener that can open at a scheduled time or scheduled with an alarm. The purpose of this project is to wake up people in the morning. For example If I wanted to wake up at 7am my alarm would ring and my blinds would open at 7am allowing the light to enter my room making to difficult for me to fall back asleep.
I am creating the project for school. I have already thought of the design. my projects must have gears Or leavers in it.
Hi Mohamed,
Sounds like a cool project. Do you know what you will use to drive the gears or levers?
How will your device know when to turn the gears and by how much? Is there a microcontroller you have experience with already at school like a Micro:Bit, a Raspberry Pi, or an Arduino?
Hi Mohamed,
Welcome to the forum, an awesome project!
To add to Trents questions have you done any programming or 3D computer drawing? These two will help a ton with your project 
Liam.
Hey Liam,
I haven’t done any programming or 3D printing, however, I have access to them at school and I’m excited to start using them.
thanks,
Mohamed
Hey, this is what I’m stuck on. I have done some research. I might use raspberry pi or an Arduino board. I have no experience with them. I’m not too sure what to use or how to use it.
Thankyou
The mechanical part will be the most difficult part to get assistance with. Once you know exactly what you want to do, such as pull a string, push a lever, rotate a crank or wind a cord, then you will find plenty of examples of how to drive the mechanism from the MPU. But the mechanism for your particular configuration of blind and window frame will probably be unique. So that seems like the best place to start.
Hi Mohamed,
Not a problem we have guides that cover Raspberry Pi and Arduino so we should be able to give you some help with either.
As @Jeff105671 has pointed out though, the challenging part of your project will be how the mechanism is activated, once we know that most important part, then we can come back to how to make a particular microcontroller work with it.
Hi Mohamed,
If you’re starting your journey into microcontrollers I’d take a look at the Pico and micro:bit.
Core has excellent guides on both microcontrollers:
Microbit: https://core-electronics.com.au/tutorials/program-a-microbit-in-your-web-browser.html
Pico: https://core-electronics.com.au/tutorials/how-to-setup-a-raspberry-pi-pico-and-code-with-thonny.html
TinkerCAD is a great bit of online software to get started doing 3D design - you could also talk with your STEM teacher to explore some options
Liam.
yeah I have though of the mechanical part I’m just stuck on the motor programming part. 
yep, Thank you.
What motor are you using? Or is that the decision you need to make?
im not too sure yet. I was thinking of a stepper motor.
What characteristics are you looking for, such as size, format, mounting, speed, torque, voltage? What is important and what is flexible?
im not really sure tbh, I don’t think I would need a lot of power. just enough to roll the blinds up and down.
also with charging the motor, I was thinking to have rechargeable batteries or solar panels since it will be at a window.
You can work out what you need by looking at the characteristics of the system you are building. That will tell you things like what torque you need, what size motor you can fit, how it will be mounted and so on. But if you are just experimenting to see what works and what doesn’t then the place to start is what you already have or what you are already familiar with or what you have access to at school etc.
yeah I agree, for now I will buy the blinds and 3d print the frame and everything. we have motors at my stem building so I can try out a couple and see what I will need. Thanks.
hey guys,
just keeping you updated. I have bought the blinds and now I’m 3d printing the frame. hopefully should be done with that by the end of the week. with the motor I’m not allowed to use the ones I have at school. I will need to buy the motor and everything else before the easter break.
I just needed some assistance with buying those products
thank you for the help.
Does it look something like this?
Wifi Roller Blinds by selexin - Thingiverse
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