Using Arduino Nano and a relay to fire a solenoid

In my previous post I talked about using a motor, a cam, and a switch to fire a solenoid. That just wasn’t going to work because it was too hard to get the right pace of the solenoid firing. The motor voltage changed its speed, and the cam idea was too difficult to adjust the cam shape and location.

In this post I’m showing how I switched to the Arduino Nano to control the firing rate of the solenoid. With the Arduino, it’s a 30-second program change to change the rate of the solenoid firing as opposed to the ridiculously difficult process with motor and cams.

The first video below shows the solenoid firing using the default settings in the sample ‘Blink’ program in the Arduino IDE.

 

The video below shows the solenoid firing after I modified the delay settings in the ‘Blink’ program.