Update!

I’ve got a working motor that rotates the deflecting object.

I got my RBE friends to help me with this part of my project; they lent me the materials, taught me how to code for the Raspberry Pi, and helped me build the circuit.

Circuit:
I’ll start with the circuit and its components. My friend, Stephanie, lent me the Raspberry Pi, circuit board, jumper cables, motor controller, and stepper motor. She also showed me her schematic of a more complicated circuit as a diagram for my simple circuit.

Motor box:
I made a separate small box to hide the motor components. I also modeled this in SOLIDWORKS, shown below. The hole on the top is so the motor spindle can peek out, and the rectangular slot on the side is for access to the micro USB port on the Raspberry Pi (so the motor can be powered).

I have a video and a photo of the motor set up and running! You can see the code on my laptop in the background of the photo. In the video, it’s cool that the light reflecting off the object is shown on the wall as well. And that is all for this post.