Ferris Wheel

I created a Ferris wheel but instead of the seats, I made them holders for Polaroid pictures. The first thing that I created was the two circles. I added holes in each section so that I could put them both together using a metal bar. I then got the size of the Polaroid but I needed a spacing between the front and the back so that the Polaroid could fit into it. I didn’t know if a piece of wood would be too thick but it ended up being perfect if I used the thinnest wood. I also cut a section out of the top so that clips could fit into it.

For the clips, I tried wood but the ends did not separate enough so I tried to 3D print them. I 3D printed clips and they worked well until I put everything together and realized that the clips were too big and the Ferris wheel did not work how I wanted it to so I designed clips using acrylic. I made these clips smaller and open on the bottom so that if one breaks I can put them on from above and they fit.

The sides of the Ferris wheel were a challenge because I had to line up the holes for the motor, Raspberry Pi, and the motor controller. I couldn’t line up the motor controller correctly so I ended up hot glueing it to the side.

I put the code for the motor onto the Raspberry Pi. I used the code from: https://github.com/lurbano/picoW-basics

Originally the base did not have the two pieces going to each side but I needed to add it so that the Ferris wheel would have more stability.

Putting it all together was a big challenge because there are so many components and it was very fragile. I connected a gear to the motor and hot glued another gear to the center bar that interlocked to the other gear. I hot-glued all of the bars together in the middle component and attached the Polaroid holder. The middle component needed to connect to the center bar but hot glue did not work so I used epoxy and it worked perfectly.