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Hackaservo.io, part 2

A project log for GimbalBot

Gimbaled thrusters, aerospace-grade adhesives, carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers, and inertial measurement units. This is a space project!

zakqwyzakqwy 08/15/2014 at 00:290 Comments

This post can only start with a comment I received on the previous post from K.C. Lee. My response is also shown below:

It's an excellent comment from someone who wants to help me learn more about analog circuits. Unfortunately, K.C. Lee posted a previous comment that was a bit less Socratic; I saw the previous (and subsequently deleted) comment show up on my feed this morning. Full disclosure, people: I copied the answer into an email, sent it to myself, and haven't looked at it since. I want to explore this circuit on my own--I've never done much with op-amps--but it will be nice to check my answer when I'm done. I hope you trust that I've done that.

First, as I suggest in my comments above, I used my whiteboard to combine two items from the FR6461 datasheet: the chip's internal block diagram and the application circuit. I cut off a decent amount of circuitry from both sides, but I think I've captured the relevant stuff (apologies as always for the shoddy whiteboard picture quality):

A few things to highlight on the diagram:

So I'm still not entirely clear on how the circuit works, but I'd like to understand how the thing is actually wired. As such, I'm going to do two things; first, I'll draw a blown-up picture of the PCB; second, I'll try to derive the schematic for the above circuit from that drawing, and related it to the FR6461 block diagram (probably erasing the green stuff in the process); third, I'll redraw the entire thing as a flat schematic, pulling the resistors and capacitors into better positions with respect to the various op-amps. I keep getting confused looking at the board, since the FR6461 pin positions force me to change schematic wire routing.

Comments are welcome. I'm going to stop this log now but will hopefully post another tonight with an as-built schematic of the analog portion of the servo board, integrated with the FR6461 block diagram.

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