Close

Working through some basic motor movements

A project log for Moti, a smart servo

Moti is a smart servo that simplifies the design of intricate robots.

nicholas-stedmanNicholas Stedman 12/23/2014 at 04:080 Comments

Recently, I've been working on basic motions with Moti; things like shooting over distances, stepping, and braking. This started with comparing different types of braking: regenerative, dynamic, locked anti-phase, and even coasting to see which would stop the motor faster. Regenerative and dynamic braking were pretty much the same, and the best performing. When initiated at full speed, it takes about 15º to come to a stop. Locked anti-phase braking didn't perform well, though I'm sure it could be done better. However it generates an audible buzz at the 500Hz PWM frequency I'm using, and I couldn't stand it...so I quickly moved on. And of course coasting was the worst and was used as a control. So for the moment I'm using dynamic and regenerative braking. This website was helpful for understanding the differences between each.

Before jumping into stepping, I wanted to see how an RC servo controls it's motor, and here I'm talking specifically about the output from the H-Bridge, so I spent some time probing it with my scope. I've uploaded a playlist of these explorations. The TL;DR of the matter is that this was highly useful. Not only did I learn how an RC servo steps, but also how it shoots and decelerates when approaching its destination. I was then able to whip up a step function that produces what appears to be both finely grained, and repeatable steps. I dabbled with shooting, but don't have anything conclusive to report about that yet.

Discussions