Proof of Concept- Using a BT speaker mainboard to control DC Motors

Thread Starter

DIY-Project-Newbie

Joined Jan 5, 2017
5
Hello everyone,

As you can see, I am new here. My wife and I are looking to start an adult novelty company and I was looking into solutions that would allow bluetooth control of these products. I bought an Arduino kit and an Intel Edison developer kit to get started, but I had an epiphany as I was driving back from Microcenter.

Talking in terms of electric and circuits, which I haven't actively studied for over 10 years, I had this idea. Typically in a novelty item you have a set of controls, other than power, that let you increase/decrease power and switch to separate modes. I then thought that since a bluetooth speaker has the same controls (volume up/down and to switch songs), if I replace the speakers with motors, would this work? Other than the obvious fact that I would have to create a custom microcrontroller, in theory, would this work for prototype reasons? Going back to basic electric currents, speakers have a positive and negative as do motors, increasing sound is increasing power which would make the motor spin faster, and switching sounds on a microcontroller would cause the motor to synchronize with the electrical pulses giving different "patterns".

Please let me know if you think this will work!
 

Bernard

Joined Aug 7, 2008
5,784
There is a big difference in inertia between a speaker & motor. A servo motor may make several moves / sec. while a speaker may make 12K moves. Audio averaged over seconds might not be very interesting.
 

Thread Starter

DIY-Project-Newbie

Joined Jan 5, 2017
5
There is a big difference in inertia between a speaker & motor. A servo motor may make several moves / sec. while a speaker may make 12K moves. Audio averaged over seconds might not be very interesting.
Well I have an older bluetooth speaker so I may just tear it apart and try it. I would think a steady tone at a certain frequency may accomplish the spinning of the motor I'm looking for.
 

AlbertHall

Joined Jun 4, 2014
12,345
Speakers work on AC and the kind of motors you are talking about run on DC. If you feed AC to that kind of motor you will generate no motion, only heat.
 

Thread Starter

DIY-Project-Newbie

Joined Jan 5, 2017
5
Speakers work on AC and the kind of motors you are talking about run on DC. If you feed AC to that kind of motor you will generate no motion, only heat.
I thought speakers run on DC and most devices have an inverter to change to DC from AC. At least that was always my understanding from car speakers...
 

Thread Starter

DIY-Project-Newbie

Joined Jan 5, 2017
5
Speaker amplifiers run on DC but the audio which is amplified and fed to the speakers is AC.
Okay so if anything I would need some kind of inverter in between, which wouldn't fix my issue. Worth a thought I guess. Any suggestions on which Arduino chip is the smallest that would have Bluetooth that can control two or three DC motors?
 

dannyf

Joined Sep 13, 2015
2,197
if I replace the speakers with motors, would this work?
conceptually it can be made to work: you can feed the BT speakers with a steady tone. By increasing or decreasing the volume, the magnitude of the tone on the output will increase or decrease and that can be used to control a motor.

not nearly as useful, however.
 
Top