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An Instance of the Arduino Perpetual Pendulum

(Filename: aht8pendu3.htm)

This is a subsidiary page related to the story of an Arduino managed perpetual pendulum. This page just gives the details of an installation of that design. It has run without incident for years.

A friend has a house with a spiral staircase in an atrium. One wall of the two story high atrium is glass, and the whole is under large skylights. Perfect place for one of my pendula, and my friend graciously allowed me to install one for him.

It doesn't lend itself to photographs. In the real world, if I do say so myself, it is rather nice.

A simple, elegant piece of wooden lath, about 35mm wide (5mm thick) swings peacefully back and forth. A regular "click" adds to the effect... I used an automotive relay to send the high current pulses to the electromagnet which keeps the pendulum swinging.

The pendulum is about 470cm long (Fifteen feet, six inches).

The arc is about 40 cm wide, at the bottom end of the pendulum.

It takes about 20 seconds to completes five complete cycles (five times "back and forth".) This creates a tranquil "pulse" for the house, when you become used to it.

You can see the bottom end of the Arduino Perpetual Pendulum swinging in the brief YouTube video the link will take you to. (You can click that without permanently leaving this page.)

Here's a gallery of some still photos...

Looking up towards top of pendulum, from on stairs...

Arduino Perpetual Pendulum- looking up to suspension

Who needs "fancy"... the suspension...

And finally a view from the side. (The pendulum is marked with a green arrow near the top of the image.)

Go to Arduino Perpetual Pendulum main page

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In addition to the tutorials for which this page serves as Table of Contents, I have other sites with material you might find useful.....

Sequenced set of tutorials on Arduino programming and electronics interfacing.
Tutorials about the free database supplied with Open Office version 2.
(If you experienced Adabas with Star Office, ooBase is nothing like it!)
Some pages for programmers.
Using the parallel port of a Windows computer.

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Click here to visit editor's Sheepdog Software (tm) freeware, shareware pages.

And if you liked that, or want different things, here are some more pages from the editor of these tutorials....

Click here to visit the homepage of my biggest site.

Click here to visit the homepage of Sheepdogsoftware.co.uk. Apologies if the "?FrmAht" I added to that link causes your browser problems. Please let me know, if so?

Click here to visit editor's pages about using computers in Sensing and Control, e.g. weather logging.

To email this page's editor, Tom Boyd.... Editor's email address. Suggestions welcomed!

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