How it eventually worked out

The idea

Wearing a propellor hat during my livestreams once became eventually more of a trademark of mine. At some point I thought, how cool would it be if my propellor automatically rotates when a viewer presses the 'Follow' button on Twitch. It would be something never seen on the platform before. When I get enthousiastic about an idea, I go for it.

I started of with researching the components I would need. Ofcourse I knew I would need some Arduino, drone motor and propellor. But there are so many possibilities and options available. Eventually I bought myself some components on Amazon and started coding.

Realisation

At this point it became really challenging. I thought I could just solder some wires on the arduino and I was good to go. That turned out very different. Along the way I figured out I would need many other compontents to make sure the Arduino circuit would not burn or crash because of the electricity pulses. With 0 Arduino knowledge I had absolutely no idea what I would need and where to solder it. Soldering can be quite tricky. If done very wrong you could heavily damage the Arduino. I decided to join the Arduino Discord server and I got the information I needed.

I had a possibly correct technical drawing and the indiviual components. Now I had to make sure my code that the Arduino would run was correct. With the use of chatGPT and the internet I managed to code something possibly correct.

Trial and error

I say possibly on purpose because you can't really tell if it would work if you have not tested yet. Before you solder you can test your circuit using a breadboard. Then you figure out it's not working. Is it an error in the code? Is it a mistake in the circuit? Maybe on of the components was defect or a pin was just not connecting good enough. You don't get an error message saying what's wrong. This point was definetly the hardest. You know you are probably very close but one little tiny thing is holding you back. After reaching, trail and error countless times I had to put the project aside for a little moment.

Overcome the hurdle

A couple of months later I saw the hat on the top of my cabinet and I just had to make it work. With a fresh mind and help of my dad, teachers, people on Discord I finally manage to make it work. Turns out a component was defect and a wire not soldered good enough.