AUTOMATIC TOILET FLUSHER

Toilets are the first thing you touch after you do your business is most likely the flush handle probably not very clean right. Great place to catch the coronavirus. To solve this problem I created THE AUTOMATIC HANDS-FREE TOILET FLUSHER.

I am a seventh-grader who loves to build circuits. Even though this is a SUPER simple circuit I didn't want to overthink it. It, however, executed its task very well and kept people sterile. The machine is triggered by a pedal on the ground that you press with your foot to turn on the toilet. The following are the materials to construct this machine

Supplies

Materials

1. A relatively high torque motor. You can gear it if you don't have enough torque on your motor

2. A breadboard.

3. Wires.

4. An electronic pedal (you can make yours with tin foil, wire, cardboard, semi-flexible plastic).

5. A power supply rated at the power of your motor.

6. A lever to hit the handle of the toilet has to fit on your motor (I 3d printed mine if that is not available get creative and do something according to your resources).

7. Tape.

8. Hot glue gun and hot glue. (I don't have a soldering iron, but if you do I suggest you use that instead of hot glue when attaching wires together)

9. Any sort of container that will secure the motor to the side of your toilet. The toilets may vary, but you can pick the material whether it is metal or plastic. In my case, I did a metal that I bent to fit my toilet.

10. Other common electronic components if you wish to modify or make a product that works better for your situation.

Step 1: Making Container to Hang on Toilet

To start you want to construct the container to strap to the side of your toilet, I chose a bendable and strong metal and with hot glue I made it fit under the toilet bowl if your toilet is like mine it should work just fine. Be careful not to drop the motor in the toilet, this is the last time you will be this close the water that might damage electronics.

Step 2: Constructing Lever Attached to Motor

In this step, you will create the lever that is attached to the motor in order to move the toilet handle on your toilet. To do this you can either 3d print out a lever or make one fit on any motor axel. If you don't have a 3d printer I suggest you craft one that fits the limits of your motor. I cannot possibly know what those all look like so you need to get creative. I took apart a drill to get this motor it has a good gearing according to the tension of pulling the handle, it is low voltage, and still has a part that you can fit drill bits in so in this 3d print I made my own custom bit that fits mine if yours is different feel free to change it.

Step 3: Making the Activating Pedal

To make the activating pedal you need to take a semi-flexible piece of plastic and cut is so about in half so that you can press it to the floor and have it come back up for another press. Once you have this take your tin foil and hot glue. With them take your piece of cardboard as well. Finally, cut out a piece of tin foil that matches the area of the cup and of the cardboard so you can press them together to send an electric signal through them. Now take log wires that will stretch from your floor to your toilet and hot glue one wire to the tin foil on the cup and one wire to the tin foil on the cardboard. At last glue the cardboard to the cup so only when you press it the tin foil sheets touch each other. Before moving on I suggest you test if it is a good switch, if not repeat if necessary.

Step 4: Setting Up the Breadboard Circuit

For this last step, you will create the dreadfully, dreadfully, complex circuit ARE YOU READY........

IT IS A SWITCH CONNECTED TO A MOTOR THAT SPINS CLOCKWISE.

Yeah, it's that simple remember it is important not to overthink it and create a dang iPhone over spinning one motor. And if it isn't so user friendly that way. Well, tough luck. Ok, all jokes aside that's all it is the pedal a switch that drives the motor if you want you can make a circuit to make it spin the other way to reverse, but if you set it up correctly you should be able to have the lever pull the toilet handle down and keep spinning in the same direction after moving out of the way of the handle.

Step 5: Congrats Now Test and Enjoy a Hands Free Toilet

As I said before I was trying not over complicate it over something so simple, before I was making it way too complex to where I thought what is the point of this and simplified it. A lot. I hope it will be easier for people who didn't have as much experience with electronics and without a Raspberry PI to make it so I made it less fancy to help a larger audience benefit from it. To the Judges reading this sorry for turning it in literally NO JOKE 20 MINUTES BEFORE IT CLOSES. I hope you consider me for the competition for it would really make my day, if not that's ok. Thank You and God bless you.