For the Ferris wheel itself, we decided to go with this Lego kit. It took about 7 hours or so to complete. This kit has an optional add-on motor, but we decided to create our own solution.
Driving the motor
We used a high torque DC motor to turn the wheel, and the L293D motor driver to drive the motor. Click here to read in depth about how we set this up, along with a basic code snippet for making the motor turn. We’ll build upon this code later in this article, when we add in MQTT functionality to listen for Commands.
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Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!