Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Drew345]

I am envisioning a project but still in need of a creative idea for a solution. As in the title, I am designing an automatic sliding door opener.
The background is… I hate sleeping with aircon, because it makes my throat so dry. I am using a humidifier too, but I really love a cool breeze from a fan with outside air. So now I go to sleep with the air con on, and if I wake up in the middle of the night, I turn off the aircon, open my veranda sliding door, and turn on the window fan. I wish the whole process was automatic though. I can set the aircon to go off at a certain time. I can set the fan to come on at a certain time. What I am missing is the way to get the sliding door open at a certain time.
I think I can make the door open with a weight and pulley. But I need something to start a motor, or create some kind of motion based on a set time. Ideally, I would have a motor that starts and pulls the door open at a certain time. Alternatively, I have the weight lifted and something knocks out its support and the weight falls and pulls the door open. Either way though, I need something to create motion at a certain time.
Any idea? If I were in America I could go to Lowes and find some kind of motor and make it come on with a timer. But here in Korea, I am not sure where to go (yeah, dongdaemun somewhere), or exactly what I need anyway.
Any idea for a way to create some kind of mechanical motion at a certain time with parts available in Korea.
Thanks,

[FriendlyDaegu]

You can get timer relays, motors, and contact switches on gmarket. Anything you need.

[Ginormousaurus]

You could look into Lego Mindstorms. You can do surprisingly complex things with them. If you know how to code, you can use RobotC to program them to do all sorts of neat things. If you don't know how to code, it comes with a visual, block-based coding software that even young kids can use.

Price-wise this probably isn't the ideal solution, but it could work and would be fun to do. You can search youtube for some examples of what others have done with them. I contemplated using them to make a mechanism to lock and unlock my dad's sliding patio door.

We also used them in one of my engineering classes. It was an introduction to robotics. We had to make use of all the sensors that come with it to do various signal processing tasks.

[Drew345]

That looks like an interesting robotics craft and hobby.

I've got something working, maybe can make improvements. I used a fan with blade removed as my motor.

An on/off socket timer trips on and the fan starts.
A cord is tied to the fan motor and wraps around finally pulling out a small support holding up a bottle of water.
The water bottle drops and is attached to a cord which goes over a pulley to the sliding door handle, pulling the door open.
Outside fan also starts (and aircon cuts off) and nice breeze comes in room.

The first problem is that the on/of socket timer has only 15 minute increments so the fan runs wildly for 15 minutes after pulling out the small support. I need a timer with one minute increments or a circuit to kill the current shortly after starting.

[Ginormousaurus]

Now you need to create another contraption to turn off the fan. Then another to turn that one off...then another...eventually you'll have yourself a nice Rube Goldberg machine!