Re: Whoosh, thud - motorised sliding doors

[Chris Hunter <cjhunter@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Will they make a difference, I wonder ... will they provide sufficient
acoustic isolation ?   In my experience, sliding doors are rarely good
at shutting-out any noise ...

Chris



Martin Howell wrote:

> I am planning to build a couple of large sliding doors to close off
> parts of my currently open plan ground floor (don't ask).  They will
be
> full ceiling height and around a metre wide, with full height glass
> panels, so they'll weigh a fair bit - obviously, I need to motorise
> them :-)
>
> Motors and gears etc are not a problem - windscreen wiper motors fed
> from a small 12v lead acid battery, kept charged by either the mains
or
> a small solar panel, letting me still open the doors when there's a
> power cut, plus some means of disconnecting the drive to open the
doors
> by hand if the motor gubbins should go titsup. Did this before with a
> huge double garage door in my last house as an experiment and its
still
> in daily use 15 years later.   The problem is control of the
open/close
> sequence and the need to have safety features included, squashing a
> small child would probably not go down well.
>
> So I need a circuit to control the open/close mechanism.  Ideally,
> pressing the button (or breaking an infra red beam) makes it open,
then
> wait a predetermined time (or wait for second beam/sensor to be
tripped)
> before automatically closing it.  There needs to be a safety mechanism
> which detects if someone is being squashed and automatically reverses
> the door, or stops it.  It would be neat to have it in touch with
other
> things - burglar alarm to auto lock the doors when the alarm is set;
> smoke detectors to automatically open the doors if the alarm goes off;
> and anything else I can think of. Opneing speed is interesting as
well,
> don't want to press the button and then wait for 30 seconds while it
> opens, but if it opens too fast it may be difficult to keep it on its
> rails - my guess is that it needs to take no more than around 3
seconds
> to fully open
>
> Has anyone come across anything like this in their travels?  Or is
> clever enough to knock up a quick circuit diagram?  I can build the
> electronics, just can't design 'em.  I could make it simple, with
> buttons for open and close, and a couple of microswitches to limit the
> travel, but where's the fun in that?  Any suggestions and/or ideas
will
> be most welcome, many thanks
>
> Martin