TinyTwo Speed Controllers

[peterwaller]

Just to give you an idea I have made 102 controllers for other people over a period of almost 5 years.
You should probably take into account that yours are likely to be quite a bit cheaper than mine and there are now a lot more robots about than 5 years ago.
But then all the existing robots have some sort of controller already so it will be mostly upgrades, new robot or new roboteers.

[Rapidrory]

Ok, so I think i'll see how it goes first then and look into getting them properly made if they started selling really well.

On the plus side at least, my new set of prototype boards were finally printed yesterday, and I spent today day putting it together and tweaking it... It works soo much better than the one Lionel had in it for the AWS; really smooth and linear drive. Lionel's now much easier to control, and that's even without the brake code added in yet.

I'm planning to do a fairly major overhaul of the firmware before I start selling these; going to up the PWM resolution from 5 bit to 7 bit, and I'm gonna try and add a box filter on the input signals to help smooth the drive a little (an idea borrowed from the featherweight electronize ESCs :L)

Hoping to do some proper stress testing with Accelerant and Stanley on monday (..if you could possibly bring them in again Alex? ) to see how well it drives pololu HP motors and big servos; The chips are only rated to 1.2A, but have a 2.5A peak rating. I've run one fine in component testing with one of these chips, just want to see if it all still works when put in an ESC.

[Shakey]

I'm sure my uniquely motor controller abusing ants can give them a whirl

[limpet]

Please add me to the list of 'beta testers'

[Rapidrory]

Hehe, I'm afraid all 4 boards already have homes for testing :L

However, I do plan to start shipping before the next AWS. Here's the project plan as it stands:

Run tests and tweak board layout accordingly next week.
Order all the parts coming from china next weekend.
Do exams until 9th June while those parts are being shipped
If that all goes ok, I should be able to start shipping finished boards out by mid June (..IF)

The price is looking more like £20 per board now I think, but postage will only be £1, so still not too bad I hope..

[haz]

Got anything that can take 4s? Asking for a friend....

[Rapidrory]

Well I am looking to see if I can make the NanoTwo HPs actually work; If so it theoretically would be fine with a 4 cell and drive 3 amps per side.

As it is, the regular NanoTwos only take up to 10V (so 2 cell).

[limpet]

When you get them working put me down for one, just let me know when they are available.

[Rapidrory]

Will do

In other news, just been playing around with the old NanoTwo HP boards to see if they can be made to work, and it seems that if yous slap a big capacitor across the voltage rails they work just fine. Need to do some more comprehensive testing tomorrow, but if they prove to be stable with HP motors and higher voltages, I might look at getting a few of the boards professionally printed along with the regular (seeing as the min order size is ~360 boards, i could do 100 HP boards and still have more regular boards than i'll ever sell :L)

Would anyone be interested in me developing some useable HP boards? They'd only really work with 3 and 4 cell lipos, but can run 3.5A either side (full specs are on page 3)...

[teamocean]

Would the HP boards with Beetleweight motors? If so I think you have a good market there