How to make the motor move after a certain period of time?

Question

Basically I want my motor to run after let's say 10 seconds passed since the program started up.

The amount of time is determined by user input, and I have already coded for that. The motor is connected to a breadboard and powered by a 9v battery, also connected to the breadboard.

The thing is, the motor runs as soon as I connect it to the breadboard. How can I use the Arduino board to make the motor wait 10 seconds before it moves? I am new to both circuitry and code... Sorry for my cluelessness.

Thanks so much.

Answer 1

You will need to add a logic level mosfet of the appropriate size and specs to control the power to the motor. You can drive the gate of the mosfet from a pin through a current limiting resistor with a larger bleed resistor. For a brushed motor you'll need a ceramic RF supressor cap plus flyback diode for back EMF protection:

^{simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab}

For greater RF supression (if your motor is pretty beefy) you can use a 0.1uF between each input lead and the motor case.

When you turn the pin on, motor turns on, low turns off. Using analog and appropriate R values you can control motor speed (setting 0-255):

int motorControl = [your pin];

void setup()
{
  pinMode(motorControl, OUTPUT);
}

void loop()
{
  delay(10000); // delay 10 seconds plus board boot time
  analogWrite(motorControl, 255); // turn motor on full
}

You can time the delay with a stop watch and adjust to be exactly 10s by dropping the delay() call to compensate for the boot up time of the board.

More about MOSFETS here:

https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/81935/mosfet-usage-and-p-vs-n-channel

Answer 2

I would recommend connecting the motor to a controller of some sort of a controller, maybe a relay or something like that, and then write some code that waits 10 seconds, and then turns on your controller / relay. That will turn on the motor.