I have an usual situation: I’d like to be able to drive all 4 motor of the Rover independently.
I imagine I could do this with two of the Sabertooth Dual Drivers, but I wanted to check to see if there was a better way (Quad Driver or some other solution) especially since a second Sabertooth along with additional batteries is a decent cost.
I searched the Robot Shop/LynxMotion, and some other sites. However, this is my first hobbyist project and I can’t confirm if an arbitrary driver will work well with a Rover (e.g. batteries, voltages, overheating, control channels, etc), which I why I was just going to stick to following the Sabertooth guide on LynxMotion.
@jeff_hykin Welcome to the RobotShop Community. There are not many quad motor drivers out there, and at this time none in particular come to mind. The situation is not at all bizarre as control of each wheel is necessary for Mecanum drive. You don’t need a second battery; you’ll wire the positive terminal from the battery’s wiring harness to one Sabertooth’s positive terminal, but include a wire in the screw terminal as well which goes to the second Sabertooth’s positive terminal, effectively splitting the battery between both motor controllers. Same for GND.
If you didn’t purchase the rover yet, note that using a dual channel Sabertooth requires that each channel can handle the current of two motors. Since you’d like to control four motors, each channel then only needs enough current for a single motor, and you could select two “lower current” dual motor controllers. Keep in mind though that the Sabertooth has some excellent features and built-in safety.
Thanks for the welcome @cbenson, and thanks for the fast explanation, that was the perfect amount of detail I needed! Now I can finish the order today like I was hoping to. I’ll take your recommendation and stick with the Sabertooth, as I can probably use all the built-in safety I can get haha. The price isn’t too different between the 12A and 5A Sabertooth, and I’ll likely be reusing it in future projects so I’ll stick with the 12A one.
Will I need to do anything to limit the current from a 12A Sabertooth being connected to 2, rather than 4, motors?
