Looking for an elegeant solution

Help & Support Robot Parts
1

I drive a semi-truck over the road. Recently my company installed ambient temperature sensors to limit idleing when the temperature is above 20 degrees and below 70 degrees. That’s fine and good - reduces costs and helps the environment - if the thing worked as designed. The temperature needs to drop below 0 degrees Fahrenheit before the truck will idle while my bunk heater can’t keep up if the temperature is less than 20 degrees and my fuel starts to gel at 14 degrees.

If a driver sets the high idle the truck will run for 3 minutes and then shut off. If the driver pushes the fuel pedal to the floor within those three minutes the timer resets. I’m not allowed to tinker with the sensor or any of the trucks electronics but it is within company policy to sit in the driver’s seat and push the fuel pedal every two minutes to keep the truck running.

What I’d like to build is an acutator powered by a 12 volt plug in (like a car charger) to push the pedal for me. I’ve looked around for a simple solution and haven’t found one - most likely I’m not asking the right questions because I’m not sure where to start.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

2

From what we can see: you need a linear actuator (or other actuator) to push the gas pedal for a second or two, every ~2min 50 seconds in order to reset the timer back to 3min. The “scary” part about this is that it creates a “dumb” system which has access to the gas pedal (if something were to go wrong and you were not in the cab - the truck can accelerate until it crashes).

This having been said, you’d need to figure out how much force needs to be applied to the pedal, and also the stroke length (for example is 35lbs force and 2 inches is enough?). Once you have that data, you can choose a 12V linear actuator. You’ll need a motor controller and a microcontroller. The motor controller can perhaps be connected to the cigarette lighter (assuming it can provide enough current), and the microcontroller would be programmed to send a signal to the motor controller every 2min 50s to extend and then retract.

Microcontroller -> Motor Controller -> Linear actuator
Both the microcontroller and motor controller would need power from the 12V supply.