Thread: My Wiper Motor Now Can Run Intermittently!

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One of the projects I'm considering for this year is a wiper motor controlled hanging victim. However I didn't want him to run continuously but to turn on and off providing a more startling effect. I know I could have used a 2 stage timer or programed a Picaxe to do the job but thought all I really need is to be able to give my wiper motor an intermittent ability just like I have in my car. After finding a circuit online, I got to modifying it so that it would be more useful in a haunt setting. Now the circuit will run for about 9 seconds and has an adjustable off time controlled by the potentiometer. My hanging victim will scare even more TOT's now! Best of all it only cost about $7 to make.

Sounds great, I'm looking to do the same thing, PLEASE keep me posted and provide more information.

Simple and very useful (or so I thought).
Here's the diagram for the circuit I used. It originally had a 100uf cap which only allowed an on time of less than 2 seconds. By replacing it with the 470uf cap, I get around 9 seconds which is what I was looking for. The 68k resistor was originally a 3.3k but it seemed to work better for me this way.
Make sure and check the documentation for your transistors. My 2N4401 had the collector and emitter pins switched from the diagram. Needless to say it didn't work until I reversed mine. A rookie mistake I won't make again.



If you want to have the ability to adjust the "on" time, I guess you could install a female header for the cap so that it could be changed but if that were the case, I'd probably go with a timer circuit instead. Since this will be installed in the body of the hanging victim and there is so much motion, I will remove the power headers and solder the wires directly to the board. I'll also drill holes to feed the wire through before soldering to provide some strain relief.
I know this is not a real elegant solution (I have plenty of really cool controllers I could have used) but if you just want your motor to go on and off, this works great and is cheap and easy too!

Thanks, but it all looks Chinese to me. This is my one weak area. I'll try to use your diagram, I think i can figure it out. If not, I'll ask the guy at Radio Shack. I plan on taking my time and doing it OJT. I'm a real newbie when coming to electronics. Hey i do know positive and negative

thats awesome! i have a butcher im making and he onlys moves fast. i mean like hes cool and everything but it kind of takes away the scarness of him bc he is constantly moving this would be perfect

I had a request for the parts list so I posted it in case anyone else could use it.