Stories Category - Progressive Automations Blog

Guy Marsden tells us about linear actuators for his solar panel tracking system and sustainability:  "As someone who is very committed to living sustainably, I have done a great deal to reduce my energy footprint, both by increasing the efficiency of my Maine home and workshop and by adding solar heating and electric systems that I designed and installed myself with the help of friends, neighbors, and family. It took me a few years to cov...

Texas A & M Uses Heavy Duty Linear Actuators for their Diamond Weapon Safe. Gun safety is an all-important issue today, and four students from Texas A & M have created a gun safe system that individually locks each weapon. This keeps the weapons that a person does not want to use safe and secure. Overview "Diamond will start from its rest place in the ground. It will be elevated by the use of a single actuator and kept in place by a r...

Wondering how to hide your TV? Try these innovative ideas. Want to put your TV away when you aren’t watching it to have more space? Whether you’re hiding your TV on a boat, in your home or anywhere else, using actuators is a low cost, efficient solution. There are many ways to hide a TV in your bedroom, depending on how much time you have and what you’d like the result to be. TV Chest The motorized TV lift is any chest that you’ve outfitted to...

Dr. Decks has brought us another great and exciting invention from his Phantom line of products. This hidden rail project uses one of our PA-15 high-speed linear actuators to extend and retract the railing using linear motion. Need to adjust the height? The motion control systems that are used for this can adjust the railing to just the right height. That means the railing is the right height to prevent the little ones from falling into the ...

A high-speed actuator, Arduino, code and a camera propels a football throwing machine into the future. Students at Florida International University have taken the standard football throwing machine to a new level with some help from Progressive Automations. The drawback to the traditional throwing machine is its inability to fire the ball towards a target that moves back and forth across a field unless the machine is manually operated. Team A...

This customer used our compact, PA-15 High-Speed Linear Actuator for this hidden compartment project. One of our customers recently sent us this video. He wanted to head up a home automation project and built this hidden TV cabinet compartment to hold his DVD player and cable box. The project uses our PA-15, a fast actuator with enough force to open and close the box. This compact actuator is also small enough to fit in the TV stand comfortab...