The controllers from Aventech arrived on Wednesday. I can now start building and testing.
First thing, it to make sure the controllers works and cope with the power of the motors and also see if I can should use 12 volts or 24v.
For this test, I just used free wires to quickly connect everything. I am controlling the MD03 controllers with 0-2.5-5v signal. I am also using a small board I make few years ago to generate the 5volts required by the controllers.
It is not great, but good enough for testing.
The control is done via two linear variable resistor of 10k to provide the 0-5v signal.
2.5v is equal to stop, 0 is full backward, 5v is full forward.
Using 12v as power source did not give very good result. The power to the motors was not great and at full speed, the robot was not very fast.
After adding the second battery to work on 24v, the motors are more responsive and speed is much better. So I guess, I will have to use both batteries in 24v setup. The mini PC I am planning to us work with 12v input, so I will have to review this and find a solution.
So, the mechanic is working, the power controllers are doing the job too. Next step is to do a proper cabling job and change the control to I2C protocol from the computer and start playing with Visual Basic.
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