So here is what I am trying to do. Is make a robot that the motor controls for movement ( left and right tracks ) are IP addressable. If that makes sense.
What I am trying to do is make an deep water (100ft ) rover what is compact as possible and also as light weight as possible. I need 2 fixed cameras and one PTZ camera. The idea is to make it all controllable through 1 cat 6 cable and a computer with multi screens on it. I don’t know that much about programming, so I was hoping for a plug and play on the motor controller and software to drive the motors. It doesn’t need to be variable speed but need to be able to turn left, right and back up.
I was thinking of ripping apart a PTZ camera for the control board and software to run it
Any help would be cool
So if I an hearing you right I would need 1 of the RB-Lin-28 and 1 of the Sabertooth Dual 25A 6V-24V for it to drive. All I would need to find is a way to control the motors from the computer if I am understanding you. As far as the cams … that is easy for me, I just don’t know anything about how to drive the bot by how I am thinking. In therory it should be easy. But we all know how that is
Is there an easy way for this to happen with someone that knows nothing about programing. I bet there is no plug and play for this. It looks like that you guys can posible help me out on this. Do I need to call you and talk on this.
Link Will this help me.
As far as the water proofing and IP cams, lighting, ect. I have concord that to 100 + feet. This is why I am stuck on the motor controls beong ran over cat or fiber. I am getting ready to test brushless motors at that depth right now. A fixed speed on the motors is fine and just Foward / off / reverse function would work fine L and R motors
So then if I went that way. I could hook straight into the analog controler with the switches to control the motors. Then use a transformer at the switch end to send the voltage to the analog controler. All this would do is make it for I have 2 cables , one for data and one for motor control. I already have a plan for a teather cable to be conected to the bot.
Can you just hook straight to an analog motor controler the way that you are saying
So now we are on to a brushless motor controller and motor. Is this possible and could it have variable speed
What do you have for the lowest RPMs and most torque that I can get without breaking the bank
Any solution where data needs to be transmitted will need some level of programming. The two solutions where no programming is required are RC control and potentiometer (and/or switch) control. R/C would be ideal, except the signal would degrade when trying to transmit over 100 feet. A simple on/off/reverse switch and a DC gear motor might work, except there would be power losses due to the distance. In this case, you would have the battery pack next to the switches (also not a great idea). A solution with a potentiometer would likely have the battery pack on board the sub.
Having designed, build and sank (and lost) a small tethered sub, the tether is the real issue, followed by the waterproofing. I had only made the tether 20 feet long, and the sub was as small as possible using two DC motors (geared down with 2:1 spur gears) and two servos for controlling fins.
We do not offer any consultation services, nor do we take technical calls by phone - this is really the best place to discuss possible solutions.
Motor controllers are usually controlled by digital signals or serial messages. If you would like to control motors with IP messages, you can use an Ethernet to serial gateway such as: RB-Lin-28
Then you can simply chose serial servo controller (along with servo motors for panning and tilting the camera) and a serial DC motor controller (along with DC motors to drive the robot).
Of course, you will need an IP camera, and you could also opt to use one that has pan & tilt incorporated in order to simplify the build.
That is right, In order to drive the motors, you will need to send the appropriate serial commands to the motor controller though the serial gateway.
A CAT5 Ethernet cable can span up to ~230 ft and maintain the signal integrity. If you want very simple control for the motors, you can the just use a simple motors controller and use switches to turn the ON or OFF. You will need to make sure to compensate for the wire length though in order to make sure the signals will get there.
We do not recommend however powering the motor directly form the tether since it will incur huge power losses and requite a very hefty tether. That is why if you only send low voltage (5V) signals down to a controller, you can still use a CAT5 cable and not worry to much about signal degradation.
You are right. You could simply install a switch on the tether cable and switch 5V for instance to the motor controller input. You might want to measure the resistance of your cable and use perhaps a higher voltage signal in order to compensate for the voltage drop along the line. The drop should be very small.
We do not believe you need a transformer at the end of the line. Just a simple DC source.
