I am working on a robotic lawn mower and ordered a massive h-bridge for the 2 wheel motors. But I have a third motor that I am planning to use. The motor is a massive starter motor, originally used for starting nitro fuel, remote control helicopters. I plan to use it to start the propane motor via remote. The starter motor only needs to run once per session at full speed to kick over the propane gas motor.
I am going to use both a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino. The Raspberry pi has the PiFace installed and has 2 high voltage relays. Since I don't need speed or direction control and the starter motor runs for less than a minute, Can I just start and stop the starter with a relay? There really is no point to installing a second motor controller in this situation.? Am I overlooking some advantage to the motor controller?
Ed, either your testing is wrong or this is a flea sized motor. 1 amp won’t drive much of a motor and certainly not a starter motor. Personally, I wouldn’t use a relay. They’re big, expensive, require spike protection, and the contacts tend to arc & burn with inductive loads. A simple MOSFET is a better solution, (in my opinion).
