Is there a reasonably simple solution for driving 30+ DC motors and reading in at least as many sensors?
It’s for a humanoid.
The DC motors will bi-directionally spin threaded rods to push water through tubes (with rubber softeners).
I need to be able to read electrical resistance from those DC motors–the more sensitive the better.
This needs to interface with a computer, preferably through USB.
By rubber softeners, I mean such that the water movement will not be rigid but even bounce a little. The bouncing feedback read in through rheostats provide an excellent source to signature specific positions/momentum of the robot. It also keeps the seals from blowing.
The robot will record and playback interaction patterns. It will also use sound and video to correlation conditions for the playback of patterns and sub-patterns.
Matthew
Hi,
Unfortunately, there is no “easy”/straight-forward solutions to drive 30 DC Motors.
First thing to consider, is how you will power your DC Motors. You would need a power supply (with the rated voltage of the motors) that can handle the total amount of current the motors consume under load.
This information can be found in the motor’s datasheet.
The second part, would be to find an appropriate DC motor driver. We unfortunately don’t offer a motor driver that can control 30+ DC Motors simultaneously.
A solution would be to use multiple DC Motor Drivers controlled with a single microcontroller.
For example, you might be interested in this Motor Shield Kit for Arduino v2.3 with an Arduino UNO Board.
The Motor Shield Kit for Arduino v2.3 can simultaneously control 4 bi-directional DC Motors. The chip on this controller drives the motors and speed controls over I2C.
Since it’s I2C, you can stack multiple shields (up to 32 shields). Therefore, you would need 8 shields to drive 30 motors.
Regards,
