IR circuit help

Thread Starter

bugsingelyn

Joined Sep 1, 2007
2
I just started building circuits and working with electronics about a month ago, so I am still very much a beginner. My latest project involves an IR LED and an IR receiver to act like a switch. When the IR receiver sees the IR LED, the circuit turns on a small 9v-12v electric motor, when the IR receiver sees nothing, the circuit turns off the motor. I found this website with a schematic of an IR circuit:
http://www.me.umn.edu/courses/me2011/robot/technotes/irbeam.html
The circuit on that website, though, is powering a single LED and I need it to power an electric motor, and I am sure there are many ways of doing this. In my eyes, I could either amplify where the original LED was so it has enough power to run the electric motor, or I could have a higher input voltage and restrict it down to 5v for the IR detector. What would be easier? Are there any other ways of doing this? Does anybody know of any other schematics that would be helpful?
 

Newton1Law

Joined Aug 22, 2007
10
The simple use for an IR dectection pair switch would be to use the IR output to pick up a small relay to turn your motor on. Then the motor may be seperate from the control circuit. If this is jaut a begining circuit to learn how to use and wire up an IR switch, why not just use it to turn on a light bulb?

Also, is you motor AC or DC? What wattage is the motor? What will it drive? A fan blade or something larger?
 

Thread Starter

bugsingelyn

Joined Sep 1, 2007
2
I do not know the wattage of the motor, but I do know that it is run off of a 9v battery, therefor it is a DC motor. It is running an agitating blade for a paintball hopper, the container to hold the paintballs while playing. Right now, the agitator is constantly on, but it does not need to be on if there are paintballs being fed to the gun by gravity, or if you are not shooting. The IR circuit is to detect if there are balls or not, and if there are no balls that the IR eye can see, there is probably a jam (or it is empty). I do not expect this to work very well, but it will be fun to make and I will hopefully learn a lot from it. I like the idea of using a relay, but I can't find one small enough for my use. What is the difference between a relay and a transistor? According to wikipedia, both are electrically controlled switches, so could I just use a transistor?

P.S. The exact hopper I am using is found here:
http://www.actionvillage.com/is-bin...dCacSgPEQ=?ProductID=GR2sFAY7rU8AAAD8GfiVkciX

P.P.S. The professional paintball hoppers use a sound activated circuit, and it turns on the motor for half a second everytime it heres you shoot the paintball gun, so it is virtually jam free. If I use IR eyes, it will only remove a jam, not prevent one. Would that be a fairly simple cicuit? If so, any ideas on how I would do this?
 
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