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I am using a part off an electronics set I got a long time ago. It is off a electronic set called

snap circuits rover deluxe

Its a disc launcher and I have wired it to how it seems to want to be wired:

enter image description here

The idea is that these circles you can see on the disc launcher are button tops and connect to other with other buttons just like buttons on a coat and how the pop together. I have some special wires that allow these button tops to be connected to arduino wires (which are what I am using). In terms of a power supply I have connected a 9V power supply (not 9V transistor battery) and I have connected the + wire to the + button on the disc launcher and the same with the - wire being connected to the - button on the disc launcher. The only confusions that I now have are:

  • What is the CONT button potentially used for?
  • What is the EXT potentially used for? I just tried guessing by putting the 9V power supply into the CONT and EXT buttons by using a breadboard, nothing happened from this, and I was also thinking during this where is the ground for the CONT and EXT pins.

If this will not simply work then, I was wondering does anyone know where I can buy an arduino plastic missile launcher

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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What is the CONT button potentially used for?

That's the trigger. Connect that to (-) and a disc should fire.

What is the EXT potentially used for? I just tried guessing by putting the 9V power supply into the CONT and EXT buttons by using a breadboard, nothing happened from this,

That is for triggering another device when this triggers. With your pop connections it can be hard to connect multiple things to the same signal, so for convenience they have given you a "pass through" connection. You could use that to chain together multiple disc launchers (EXT on one connected to CONT on the other)

and I was also thinking during this where is the ground for the CONT and EXT pins.

The (-) battery connection is ground.

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  • By using the CONT, could you somehow use a digital pin signal to activate the disc launcher?
    – DigitalRookie4
    Oct 28, 2020 at 14:44
  • Majenko, how are you figuring out the disc shooter? Did you find some specs, or are you making educated guesses about how it works? I wonder if it uses 5V CMOS control signals, or if it drives higher voltages through the signal pins? If the CONT line feeds >5V out it would damage an Arduino digital pin when you set the pin to LOW.
    – Duncan C
    Oct 28, 2020 at 19:53
  • @DuncanC There's certain keywords that have special meaning, such as "Active Low" - which means for an input connect it to ground to activate it, or for an output it will go to ground to indicate that it's active. - on the battery is almost always ground. Everything you need is in that image, you just have to know how to interpret what it says.
    – Majenko ♦
    Oct 28, 2020 at 19:58
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You need to connect (-) to both the battery - terminal and to the Arduino ground.

Connect CONT to a digital output pin on the Arudino. When you set the Arudino pin to LOW, it should trigger the disc launcher.

If the disc launcher uses CMOS logic you should be good to go. IF it uses TTL logic then you will need a TTL driver chip or a transistor or you might burn out the Arduino pin. You will need the specs for the disc launcher to be sure, or measure the current it drives through the CONT pin to ground. (It should be effectively zero for a CMOS pin, since CMOS inputs are capacitive. If it's a TTL input it will push like 20mA from the CONT pin to ground, as I recall.)

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  • The digital pin output did not fully work sorry :( . But I had another idea I could use a transistor to turn the circuit on or off when I want to
    – DigitalRookie4
    Oct 28, 2020 at 19:21

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