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Flip Up Lighting

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Gerik Bensig

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Hello, I am working on a project where I will have roof-mounted, covered lighting on my vehicle and then at the push of a button (or two), the cover will slide back and four lights will rotate up and turn on.

I have a video of what I'm trying to do below - this is just a concept, considering it does not include any components that will actually move the set up.

**broken link removed**

I don't know a lot about circuitry, other than an electronics class I took in high school. My main question is if you know of a good motor choice to make this stuff happen? I understand I may need multiple motors / actuators to achieve my goal. Eventually I would like to make the whole process happen at once, but if I need to do each action manually by the touch of several different buttons, that's fine for now.

I don't wish to spend a fortune, so cheaper is better, but any ideas will be appreciated.

What I can tell you is the cover will be somewhere around 40x10x4 inches in 1/8th steel and the lights will together weigh approximately 5.5 lbs, not including the rotating bar they will be attached to.
 
The cover sliding back and the lights flicking up would be easiest to do using a cam/lever design, that would require nothing more than some trial and error. An ideal motor would be a power window motor, or something like the geared motors that are in automotive power seats, they're designed to handle pretty massive torque and provide a slow smooth movement. Stopping the motor would simply be a matter of using limit switches. Could probably be done pretty easily with a visit to your local car junkyard, and a few bucks.
 
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I used a power window motor for a project I did for school last year. They work pretty well and I may try that again. The power seat motor is another good idea, and I will definitely investigate that idea further.

If you have any thoughts on how to set it all up, feel free to post the idea. Images help (hand drawings are fine by me!).

Thanks!
 
The mechanical side of things is really the art and that's left up to you. I imagine a simple single rotating gear that will slide the housing up and back with a cam to control the cover height, on a gear that's slightly faster than the gear that lifts the lights to vertical. The video you linked shows the cover sliding back and the lights going up, where the simplest solution is a mechanical linkage that does both at the same time. The benefit is a single smooth acting system, the complexity is mechanically designing it, electrically doing the same thing would require more money time and energy than a simple cam/gear system.
 
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