I am new to robotics and electronics in general, so thanks in advance for your patience and support. I am trying to build a 6WD rover using a Roboclaw 2x15A motor controller. So far, I haven’t used an Arduino. I have been able to get it to work using commands from Ion Studio via USB.
I now want to use it wirelessly and just purchased a PS2 controller for this purpose. Roboclaw’s user manual includes a wire diagram (on page 51) for connecting the RC receiver to the controller. Here’s a screenshot of the page: image.ibb.co/fpSqUJ/Screenshot_ … al_pdf.png
I have two questions:
Can I connect the receiver w/ adapter to the Roboclaw directly, or will I have to use an Arduino? If so, are there wiring diagrams for connecting the receiver to an Arduino Uno or Mega?
If I can connect it directly, what’s Channel 1 and 2 for this receiver? The pins are labeled: DAT, CMD, ATT, CLK, 5V, GND.
Thanks! Please let me know if you’d like more information.
Welcome to the fun (but challenging!) world of robotics!
Here are answers to your questions & comments:
The Roboclaw has a RC-type connection available. The PS2 receiver has a PS"-type connection available. As you may have guessed by this point, they are not compatible. What you basically need is a PS2 receiver <> RC control signal adapter. An Arduino is one possible choice to implement one with, but not the only one. That being said, we’d highly recommend using an Arduino since they are :: choose one or more:
]Easy to use for beginners/:m] ]Inexpensive to obtain/replace/:m] ]Has libraries for PS2 controllers available/:m] ]Has a large community for support/:m]
We actually offer a kit that is used on the Lynxmotion robotic platforms, RB-Lyn-899. This can be connected to any Arduino-compatible microcontroller board. Here is an example of this kit being connected to a [RB-Lyn-363]. As you can see, 4 of the pins are digital signal pins. The others are VCC, GND and any remaining pins can be safely ignored.
You cannot. See answers above for details.
We hope this helps!
Sincerely,
P.-S.: I updated your post so your user manual links to page 51 directly. Most PDF readers support #page=??? in the URL directly after the “.pdf”.
Thank you for your response, and for the tip on linking PDFs! Very enlightening. It makes sense to use Arduino to interface PS2 with RC. I had already seen Bill Porter’s blog, linked on the Lynxmotion site, and I now have a better understanding of why that’s relevant.
Ah, I totally forgot to mention it in my reply… Bill Porter’s library is The Thing ™ for this situation!
We even have our own fork for the Lynxmotion platforms here, though it has slightly different timings for our controllers.
