Advise on Hardware needs for an actuator to "Press a Button"

Hello from Merry Olde England,

I have a small project in mind that will involve driving an actuator that will push one of two adjecent buttons on a physical telephone in specific fixed timings. The reason for this is that many of our customers have extremely busy phone lines and it is often very difficult to get through without continually retrying, hoping therefore to be able to automate this this is a common bugbear with staff.

I envisage some sort of “Clip On” device that would sit atop those two buttons and with an actuator ( “Finger Emulator (?!)” ) on each. The actuator would be controlled from an AutoIt script running on a PC, or another compiled Executable that can be called from there.

Can anyone advise what I would need in terms of controller/actuator for this project?
I can solder if needs be, but if there are parts that don’t require soldering that would be even better.

Hope this makes sense and if I can supply any other info or specifics about the project that would help please let me know.

Cheers,
Luke.

Hello, Luke.

That sounds like a fun project! There are a variety of ways you could achieve that motion and control by making your own system with our products. One way you might consider is to use one of our Maestro servo controllers to control a pair of RC servos from your computer. You can download and use the Maestro Control Center to record and save your own sequences of servo movements, and control them from your computer. Also, we carry assembled versions of our Maestros, so you would not need to do any soldering. You can watch the “Getting started with the Pololu Maestro Servo Controller” video, and read through the Maestro’s user’s guide to get a better idea of whether or not the Maestro is something you want to work with. You can find the user’s guide under the “Resources” tab of any of the Maestro’s product pages.

-Jon