This is another useless box, but this time I incorporated a
"No Button" which my parents had given me for X-mas. The button just says "No" in one of many different ways when it is pressed. I figured this would be easy to rig with the existing momentary switch on the inside of the box so that it would say "No" when the box was turned on and as it was turning itself off.
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Two battery systems power the motor and the No Button.
The speaker is in the top right corner. |
Whenever integrating ideas like this, one has to make sure of compatibility For instance, the GM3 motor is running off of 6V, but the No Button runs off of 3V. Should those two be integrated or left separate? In this case it was much easier to leave them separated. A voltage divider was something I considered, but the voltage will fluctuate as the GM3 motor turns and also as the No Button circuit draws current. In addition, the voltage divider would be constantly shunting current from the batteries unless a separate on/off switch was installed, which seemed to defeat the purpose of the useless box.
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Here you can see the two momentary switches
which are both tripped by the wooden arm. |
Another compatibility question was whether the same momentary switch could be used to drive both the GM3 and the No Button. This would be very convenient, but it turned out not to work. Instead when the motor was running, the No Button generated static which persisted even after the momentary switch was opened again. Perhaps some capacitance and some IC effects on frequency? Anyhow, after brainstorming, I realized that it would be very easy to add a second momentary switch right next to the first so that the arm would trip both switches at the same time. In this way, the No Button is completely isolated electrically from the motor circuit, and it works great.
