SAGAR Update, New Motor Controller and Motors

Posted in Projects by Bill
7 Aug 2010
SAGAR Update, New Motor Controller and Motors

Hey Guys,

It’s been a while since I posted an update on SAGAR, but here’s the latest.

I wanted her to go faster. My original motors would only do about 1.2 m/s tops. Well, with a little help from a friend, I found new motors that would bring up the top speed to well over 3 m/s. However, they require more current to reach that speed, more then my original controller could handle. So it had to be replaced.

I wanted to build a single board motor controller from scratch, but couldn’t find the parts I needed with the support for the higher current. I decided on a motor driver board from Pololu, and designed my own ‘daughter board’ to connect to it.

The daughter board is an Arduino board of my own design. It mates directly with the Pololu driver board, and included the pin headers for motor encoders, and a connector for a Dimension Engineering voltage regulator. The regulator will be providing the 5V rail for all the electronics in SAGAR.

I have several copies of the daughter board if anyone wants them. They are yours for free but you pay shipping. Leave a comment if you would like one.

Here are some pictures: (click for full size)

New

Some more pictures:

The old Motor Driver. I feel like it was such a messy job now.

With the Voltage and Current Sensor

Installed. Man it looks sexy!

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