Build a REAL Robot – Episode 7 – Motor Test

This is episode seven of an ongoing series about building a REAL robot. In today’s installment, I’ll be powering up the motors and testing them out.

Accompanying article at https://dbot.ws/rbt007
Full series at https://dronebotworkshop.com/build-a-real-robot/

Today is a big day, my robot DB1 is finally going to get moving!

I’ll show you a few wiring enhancements I made since we last got together. I’ve hooked up the power connector, corrected a potentially deadly wiring error (yikes!) and connected the Cytron motor drivers to the power distribution board.

I also hooked up the motors themselves and then I ran the built-in test on the motor drivers to make sure everything was working.

After that, I temporarily wired up the Arduino Mega 2560 to use as a source of PWM to test the motors out. I loaded up a simple sketch and DB1 went through the motions!

It wasn’t a perfect test run, the robot seems to have a weight problem – it doesn’t have enough weight on the front! I repeated the test with some weight on the front of the robot and that pressed the wheels down enough to make the traction a lot better. The test than ran successfully.

If you are also building a similar robot you can find the sketch that I used in the article on the DroneBot Workshop website at https://dbot.ws/rbt/007. I also describe how I hooked up the Arduino to the motor controllers in the article.

If you’re just joining the project and would like to catch up you’ll find a playlist at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWNDWPAClRVqZITmi-J-7E9XSZd2aqqBh. You can read all of the articles at https://dronebotworkshop.com/build-a-real-robot/.

The best way to stay informed about the DB1 robot project is to subscribe to the YouTube channel. And speaking of subscribing, please subscribe to my newsletter as well, I’ll be giving you extra robot information in it. The newsletter is also the ONLY way to suggest new article and video content that you would like to see me create. You can join at https://dbot.ws/dbnews.

Thanks for watching!

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