College Project Question.

[Jordan13]

Hey everyone,

I am currently in the process of building a PLC based project at my college. I am looking to build an “Automated Golf Putting Green”. It would be built in a wooden frame with a trampoline/turf putting surface. I am looking to automatically adjust the contour of the surface through use of actuators underneath that are controlled using a PLC with digital I/Os. Simply put i would have a sensor at in the hole that would input to the PLC to adjust the actuors to either on/off for that hole pattern. It is going to be a 9-hole game with 9 different patterns for the actuator array.

My main question is does anyone have any suggestions for a PLC that would best get this job done? Also does this sound doable?

My budget is about $350 for a PLC

Thanks you

 

[Steve Bailey]

How many actuators?

You can get away with as few as three discrete inputs if you use a BCD coded thumbwheel to input the hole number.

You can probably come in on-budget with the Automation Direct Click PLC.
https://www.automationdirect.com/clickplcs

 

[Jordan13]

I’ll check this out! Thank you

Wanting to run six actuators.

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[the_msp]

https://www.automationdirect.com/ad..._(stackable_micro_brick)/plc_units/c0-10are-d

Free software. Talk to your distributor, mention this is a college project, they may give discount on hardware.

 

[rtgibson]

I was asked a couple of years ago to quote for a commercial project like this - it didn't go anywhere but I went down the route of using a cheap Raspberry Pi setup with some 10A motor drivers to move the actuators (a 5 x 5 matrix). Used the I/O pins on the Pi to drive the motor drivers/actuators. The actuators had resistance feedback on them so I knew their position - I read that back hooking up some analog input boards to the Pi. For £50 or whatever the Pi was you can hook up a HDMI monitor and write a front end for it to keep scores etc. Addon boards for the Pi are so cheap to be able to prototype stuff like this.

It's a shame it didn't get off the ground - it was an interesting project.

 

[Jordan13]

Ya, I initially had the idea to have scores displayed etc.
May still do, trying to keep fairly basic for marking purposes. I hope to add to it once this process is completed.

Thanks for the reply