Arduino Powered Elevator

When deciding on a project time was taken to think and choose something used nearly every day and taken for granted. Not only that, but this project needed to be something that could be applied to other things down the road. So it was decided, the project was to design an Arduino/LabView controlled elevator made of common materials.

Yes, this elevator is built with foam, wood dowels, and cardboard as the main structure. Everything was laid out in AutoCAD so the dimensions would be perfect. After the main structure was built the control was added, meaning a brushed motor, limit switches, threaded rod, Arduino, and a full dual H-bridge driver. Then using the tools learned in class an Arduino was used to read the limit switches and driving the motor. In order to provide buttons for the user LabView was used as it natively supports Arduino. The elevator car moves up and down by powering the motor which then spins the threaded rod moving the nut attached. Only leaving the limit switches to detect top and bottom floors. The plan was to add additional limit switches for the middle floors but time was cut short and simple timing was done for those floors.

Although this project is complete the future applications are high. There are full intentions to take methods learned from this project and apply them to future projects.