Build a Real Robot Episode 8 – Motor Controller Part 1

In this week’s installment of my quest to Build a Real Robot, I am starting to design the motor controllers for the DB1 robot.

Article at https://dbot.ws/rbt008
More robot projects and Arduino experiments at https://dronebotworkshop.com
Want to suggest new content? Join the newsletter at https://dbot.ws/dbnews and have your say!

Today we’ll start the design of the motor controller, actually “controllers” as there is one for each motor. These devices will connect to the Arduino Mega 2560 over I2C and will drive the Cytron MD10C motor drivers.

They will also connect to the rotary encoders in the gear motors so that we can read the motor speed and position. And they will have an Emergency Stop input, to bring the motors to an immediate stop if something bad happens.

I’m just starting the design, in this episode I will explain the design criteria and show you the commands the state controller will respond to.

Had a bit of a problem in the workshop this week, my workbench computer is no longer working. The SSD, which is only four months old, will not boot. Not a huge issue as all the data is on a network server (and is backed up to a cloud server), but it did set me back a bit while I set up a Windows notebook to take over until I replace the SSD.

As a result, I’m now developing the motor controller using an Arduino Uno, all attempts to install the CH340 Windows drivers for my Arduino Nano clones failed so I switched to an Uno. It’s just for development purposes, the final controller will use either Arduino Nanos, Pro Minis or (most likely) just the ATMega328P chip with its supporting hardware.

It’s a short episode, both due to the computer failure and because I’m in a “design mode” so I’m running a lot of tests and experiments that are still “in progress”. Next week I hope to have some code and demos to show you.

Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy the episode and that you find it useful. See you again next week!

P.S I’d like to get suggestions for creating something like a forum or Wiki, so we can trade ideas and also display all of our robotic creations. If you have any ideas please leave them in the comments. Thanks!

source