Simple hacks for Project 5 in the Arduino Uno Starter Kit

As you can see from this thread, there are some minor obstacles to overcome when wiring up project 5 in the arduino starter kit. I thought I'd give it a go and see if it's as annoying as this guy makes out.

This project uses the following components:

- 2 100uF decoupling capacitors
- 1 servo motor
- 1 potentiometer
- a few wires

Constructing the circuit: 

- hook up the potentiometer with 1 of the capacitors
- and the motor with the other capactior

Program it to read from the potentiometer and move the motor (which has a 180 degree range) accordingly.

Tacking the problems in the 'official' instructions

1) "The base of the potentiometer is too wide to fit as per the book diagram. It stretches 5 holes across, in the book the diagram shows it as 2. I cannot make the circuit in the book."

Yeah, ok, I'll give him this. It's a bit annoying to order a starter kit with a solderless breadboard then have components that are clearly meant to be soldered on.

My solution: 3 jumper wires (2 tiny ones and 1 slightly longer one) and some blue tac. (I didn't say this would be pretty)

I looped the jumper wires around each of the pins and secured it with blue tac. Jobs a good 'un.

2) The header short end is too short to fit into the servo female end.

Someone on the thread suggests taking out pliers and forcing the plastic off to make these male header pins the right size.

My solution: 3 short jumper wires

I just ignored the male header pins entirely and stuck three wires in there.

3) "The potentiometer 'base' just doesn't fit well into the board at all and whilst the circuit I've made works, it's all over the place unless I press down very very hard on the base. "

As mentioned above I didn't attach the potentiometer directly.

4) "I also discovered that the white leads in this mouser kit actually vary in length"

Unable to reproduce this problem. :-)

5) "In the book circuit the leads are from the top down black, red, white, but on the supplied servo the order is different, black, white, red. "

Is this really a problem? For a servo motor with arduino, attach the white wire to a PWM enabled digital pin (the example in the instructions it says attach to ~9 but it doesn't matter which), the black wire to ground and the red to 5V.

My additional problem #6

I didn't have a screwdriver tiny enough screw the arm into the motor, but I found that a pair of tweezers did the job.

My final circuit