I’m new with robotics or anything related to controlling motors, servos etc. but seeing your shop I’ve decided to get started and I hope you could help me out before I throw in hundreds of dollars to get the wrong gear.
So what I try to accomplish is mechanism that physically rotates an object to a position a virtual object has on the screen of my macbook. This would be to emulate an airplane pitch and bank angles from a simulator software to a small model plane attached to the motors and a chassis that allows it to rotate. So I would basically spam different angles to the motors x times per second. So not a robot per se, but I hope it qualifies to the forums.
Reading the the angles from the sim and writing python etc to replicate the bank and pitch angles to do this should not be a problem as I have a coding background. But what is a smart way of doing that with parts you have in your catalogue? Sorry in for noob questions:
Steppers don’t know their exact angle as there can be resistance etc that, what parts would I need to make a loop that will report back the position of the shaft?
How do I power the motors conveniently? Does the power come from the controller board or to the motor directly? Should it be a battery or do you have a wall pluggable adaptor that could output two or three engines at the same time?
Thanks for the insight Cbenson, I went through the tutorial and I think I’ve now found what I want. But before I order there is one concern I have. Your grand tutorial says about stepper motors that “Configured properly, a stepper can rotate CW and CCW and can be moved to a desired angular position.”. But as I planned to order this Soyo unipolar motor it says in the linked pdf document that “Rotation CW( See from Front Flange )”.
So my questions this time are that:
If I get this controller does it allow me to rotate the motor CW and CCW?
Will it really allow running four motors in parallel or will there be heat problems?
If one motor eats 0.68A connecting four will take 4x that, right?
Stepper motors, DC motors with encoders and (potentially) servo motors would work. If the angle is less than 180 degrees per axis, then use servos. Take a look at the Grand Tutorial Series, lesson 3.
Many people use a switch; they have the stepper rotate in one direction until the switch is pressed, indicating that it has reached the “home” position.
If you want a stepper motor, you need to determine the torque required as well as the nominal voltage. You would then choose the stepper motor controller (unipolar or bipolar) based on the max continuous current and voltage.
The power goes to the controller board(s); read the user manual carefully to understand where and how to make the connections. A controller acts like a "gate keeper’; the microcontroller (or computer in your case) sends the signal to the “gate keeper” (motor controller) which then “opens the gates” to allow the batteries to provide the desired power to the motors. The choice of wall adapter depends on the nominal voltage of the motors and the TOTAL current required.
