New to robotics. RC transmitter and brushed DC motors?

Community General Discussions
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Hello, I am new to robotics. 

My First Project:

Hacking a toy R2D2 robot with brushed DC motors to work with my RC transmitter. 

My question is: What type of brushed ESC or  other interface is needed?

 

Thanks in advance. 

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**I have been using the Turnigy 20A brushed esc **

I have used the Turnigy 20A esc on the past two mini Sumo bot’s a made for a school teacher friend.  They can handle a good bit of stall kids can put on the motors.

You can drive an esc just like a servo would be with what ever controller you choose (If you need one) or via an RC receiver.

Now as Duane said, if you are going the micro controller route, then an h-bridge may be a good way.  

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** jscottb and Duane,Thank**

 jscottb and Duane,

Thank you both for your helpful replies.

I ordered a TGY-20A - Turnigy 20A BRUSHED ESC (USA Warehouse) to get me started with my project. 

I will also experiment with an arduino and  H bridge.

Best, Pierce /aka ijava

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Very sorry, Duane is correct.

I thought it was the one used because I had one in a box.  It was one for a car/tank with a heatsink. Please fogive me, tired and been around teens all weekend long :slight_smile:

 

PM me in here and send my you mailing address and I will send you an Arduino and an h-bridge(s).

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While controlling the

While controlling the brushed DC motor with a transmitter, if you plan to use Arduino as the microcontroller board and a motor driver, you can easily read the length of pulses, as Duane mentioned, using Arduino’s pulseIn() function. If you have channel 1’s signal pin (the one in the middle is Vcc, outer one is Gnd) of your receiver connected to digital pin 3 of the Arduino :

Pulse Reading ( Length of pulse in microseconds) =  pulseIn(3, HIGH, 25000); // where 25000 is the timeout in microseconds (default = 1s)

Plug in the serial cable to view the pulse length through the serial monitor. ( Serial print to that )

Then, its just a matter of experimenting and noting down the pulse values. You might want to create specific ranges for a certain task to be carried out by the robot. ( For a random example : if you get values from 1000 - 2000 when the throttle stick goes from down to up, you can tell the robot to go forward. But try to set more smaller and clearly defined ranges for an accurate control as ranges might overlap when you try to include a couple more channel readings into your code)

And I hope you do know how to program a motor driver through an Arduino. Depends on which motor driver you are using. A quick google search will lead you to the datasheet of the H-bridge used or similar tutorials. Hope it works out. And yes, as the others have said, you can control the ESC in a similar way to controlling a servo.

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** I ordered:HobbyKing X-Car**

 

I ordered:HobbyKing X-Car 45A Brushed Car ESC (USA warehouse)I am confused about the wiring. The esc only has 2 wires to supply to one dc motor. Do I connect the “servo steering wires” to other motor to achieve tank type steering? See attched file.Thanks

Directory: files/userpics/u22456

Directory: files/userpics/u22456