Does the sabertooth 2x32 motor controller for a wheelchair motor robot work with the raspberry pi easily

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1

How well does the saber tooth 2x32 work with the raspberry pi?
Will I have to code my own controller or will I be able to just tell it Forward back left right by sending pwm servo commands.
I’ve been reading over the manual and looking online for hours and it seems to be the answer is yes it works well but all of this is new to me.

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2

Hi @AutomationGroup

Thanks for contacting us. The Sabertooth 2x32 supports multiple inputs, so there are many approaches for controlling it with a Raspberry Pi. We would recommend using either the Simplified serial or Packetized serial modes.

To do this, you would need one of the TX pins of the Raspberry Pi to the Sabertooth through a logic level converter such one of these two:

A logic level converter is needed because the Raspberry Pi uses 3.3V serial whereas the Sabertooth requires 5V serial.

Here is a reference for using the serial port on the Raspberry Pi:

Another approach is to use two of the GPIO pins to produce two R/C PWM signals that can be connected through the logic level converter to the Sabertooth using mode 2. Producing a R/C PWM signal with the Raspberry Pi is a little tricky, and this approach requires twice the circuits, which is why we recommend using serial instead.

If you will be using other servos, you might want use a serial driver device such as the Lynxmotion SSC-32 servo controller board:

You would need to connect it to one of the Pi’s serial ports through the logic level converter, and then in turn connect two of its outputs to the Sabertooth’s inputs. By itself, this is more complex than the first approach, but gives you a very powerful servo controller board that can let you control up to 30 other servos without much additional work.

If you want to use an analog range sensor (such as the following) with your Pi, you will need an analog-to-digital converter such as the following:

If you want to use an I2C range sensor (such as the following) with your Pi, you will need to use a bi-directional logic level converter such as the second of the two we recommended previously:

For using video for autonomous control, you would need to research and experimentation since they’re isn’t a lot of people that have done this yet. You might want to use the Raspberry Pi Camera Module or one of the following USB web cameras:

We hope this helps and let us know if you have other questions.

Thank you for choosing RobotShop,

3

sind die logikonverter auch nötig bei der nutzung des t expanders am pi der ja 3 und 5 volt ausgänge hat?
ist die verbindung rein über usb kabel löglich?Danke

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Hallo @hilden0408 und willkommen in unserem Forum.

Haben Sie weitere Informationen zu diesem T-Expander? Wenn es einen 5-V-Logikpegel hat, ist vermutlich kein Logikpegelwandler erforderlich.

Was den USB-Anschluss betrifft: Ja, Sie können ihn nur über USB von einem PC aus steuern. Weitere Informationen finden Sie hier:

Fühlen Sie sich frei, etwas anderes zu fragen.

Hi @hilden0408 and welcome to our forum.

Do you have more information about that T expander? If it has 5V logic level then I guess logic level converter is not needed.

Regarding the USB, yes, you can control it only using USB from a PC. See more here:

Feel free to ask anything else.

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Woow .This Forum is great.Yes it have 3 and 5 volt logic converter. This is the expander.
reichelt.de/de/de/raspberry-pi-t-cobbler-plus-rpi-t-cobbler-p-p235529.html?PROVID=2788&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiArby5BhCDARIsAIJvjISop7eltv0pIBezoXj8KUZl6mmOJFx7L09-fJiDZT0E957C-Kspn2waAlaQEALw_wcB&&r=1

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Hi @hilden0408 ,

I think this is just expansion board, without logic converters so you would still need some if you want to connect 3.3V to 5V.