More scoring system questions! (and some motor controller stuff)

[Deimos]

Hi,

It was mentioned somewhere that the new scoring systems were going to available on the tr store, is that still going to happen, or did i miss something somewhere? Also, are the panels going to be made available on the tr store so i can get the scoring system & panels in one order? I'm just asking because i'm planning on ordering some spares of things soon and i don't like to pay shipping more than i need to.

Also, is there a specific motor controller that you guys have been using to power your guns, because i poked around a little and realized that i had no idea what i was looking at. Would something like this be good? http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/1212
the motor is 6V in a cheap plastic defender style gun, i didn't measure the amperage but i doubt it's that much. Suggestions would be most appreciated .

Thanks

[byi]

that controller would work, and you aren't going to find motor controllers of the proper size formore than a few dollars less, so i think thats a good enough deal. i have used pololu boards on several projects, and have never had any trouble.

[tician]

I'm also a fan of pololu motor driver boards.The only problem I've ever had with a pololu board was from stupidly connecting a way too massive stepper motor to a stepper driver board - burned two of them out from over-voltage (back-EMF) and/or over-current before I thought to test with a smaller motor.

If you are sure they are 6V motors and you were to measure the current, and it was less than 1A sustained, you might be able to get away with the $6~$7 DRV8833/8835 driver boards - tiny little boards in a DIP14/16 footprints. Might not work too reliably if it is 1A+ sustained (although if you only have one motor to drive, you could hook both H-bridge channels in parallel to split the load between them). Just a thought... YMMV.

[Gertlex]

I want to say that board's current limit might be too low for the spikes that the AEG gearboxes use, but I might be wrong. The commonly used boards (i.e. proven to be sufficient) are the more pricey VNH boards: single, double. You could drive two guns off the single, I'm think... Some folks like to have the option of separately controlling their guns, and so I think I've seen the dual motor driver used more often.

If you want to make your own, I believe this is another good option: http://forums.trossenrobotics.com/sh...n-motor-driver

I don't know about the scoring systems, though...

[jwatte]

I'm driving my guns with this:

http://www.digikey.com/product-detai...2-5-ND/2606361

At $0.69, 22 milli-Ohms resistance, 447 pF gate capacitance, and 2.15 V gate threshold, it's a very economical logic-level switch for up to 30A!

The connectors I use are rated for less, but the duty cycle is low, so that's OK. Also, if you solder this on breadboard/perfboard, make sure to reinforce the high-current paths with bare wires running along the traces on the board, because the thin sections of the copper strips will burn off otherwise.

[lumpen5]

I too still need to get the scrogging system ( I have the old one from a few years back and it is in a state of disrepair.) Has anyone heard if there is a link or announcement?

[jwatte]

Last I hward they were still fixing the regulator problem. No news after that.