not waving, testing

this is a very basic testing of a pulley system now rigged up to 'TEST PLANT A' (the poor little guy is copping a battering as the main test subject), trying to see how well it elicits a SWAY and estimating the time needed to pull in each direction, and how much pause between each pulling motion is required.

we've tested with a motor now too and it works pretty well, so a quick materials run to jaycar gave us another motor, a quieter, smaller one to test, but it is malfunctioning for some reason. lunch has been called. jesse will swing by jaycar on this lunch run and take the motor back to be replaced.

above is the rig up for the SWAY motor. we've instructed it to spin in one direction for a set amount of time, pause, then spin back the other way. we'll do this for about 5 or 6 cycles, to set the plant into a swaying motion and then let it slowly return to a rest state.

i've rigged the plant up with some fishing line, protecting the plant trunk with a layer of gaffer, and then some extra gaffer to help hold the line in position. this will all be covered up, by a layer of soil above, so all the motors and pulleys will be hidden inside a 'basement' level between the visible top surface and the main soil level.

this image above is from a sketch on day 3, indicating the hidden basement setup. i'm thinking that the top layer could be stocking material. that way it can be adhered to the edge of the pot and to the trunk of the plant, a small layering of soil placed on top, and it can move around easily.

here we have put on a wheel to allow the nylon thread to wind around and then pull down on either side. works pretty well - just gotta get a better motor sorted out.

once this SWAY motor is done, we're back to having the 2 motion states (SWAY and SHUDDER) and all i need to do is make one of each, for each plant, and set them into a pot arrangement, all hidden away and invisible. and that'll be the mechanisms finished. once there, we can move on to coding the conditions by which they function.