I’ve been reading the Premier Issue of ROBOT Magazine, and I was reading the article about the robot tank. It so happens that I have that same tank and I want to do something with it. My idea was to remove the turret and add the Lynx 6 robot arm. I also want to make the whole tank autonomous.
My question is: Can I use the electronics from the arm to also contol 2 motors on the tank and 1 proximity sensor while using the tanks’s 12v battery to contol everything including the motor, arm, and sensor. (I know there’s plenty of power)
Tell me what you think and thanks in advance for the help,
If your controlling the SSC-32 with a Basic Atom or some other similar type of micro controller then yes you can. If your just using the SSC-32 then no I dont believe that you can.
If you want to use the SSC-32 to control the tank drive motors you will need a motor controller inbetween the SSC-32 and the motors. I don’t know how much current the tank motors require, but if it’s around a couple amps the Scorpion motor controller will work.
There’s still the issue of what is sending data to the SSC-32 to make the thing moove. For an RC solution, here is a tutorial for controlling our 4WD1 robot and L5 or L6 arm using a Bot Board / Basic Atom 28 and the SSC-32 servo controller. The same exact setup may work for your tank. Then it’s a matter of replacing the Sony Play Station game controller code with behaviour based code for autonomous operation. lynxmotion.com/images/html/build085.htm
Note: the tutorial assumes you have already done the previous tutorials to setup the drive system found here… lynxmotion.com/ViewPage.aspx … D=19#rover
I come from the RC world, so I really only understood about 1/3 of that.
From what I got from your reply, I can say that the tank already has a motor speed controller between the mainboard and motors. I don’t know if I need a special one for making it a robot.
I have no clue how many amps the motors draw.
When you talk about the input to the board; Couldn’t I just write a code that would basically say to do a certain thing with the arm while the motors are randomly driving while using the proximity sensor to make sure it doesn’t crash into something. (yes, I know that was confusing)
You need a motor controller that will respond to the motor controller’s output signals. I’m not sure what board the motors are already using, but the motor controller needs to be able to receive signals from the microcontroller. If you can post a picture of the board that is curently used with those motors, we might be able to see if it hackable or not.
I grabbed the magazine and am looking at the article you are talking about. The tank has a relay board for the two drive motors and the turret motor. It has wires that go to a radio board. It seams that the relay board will operate the motors with 8 TTL level signals. The solution I provided allows proportional control of the motors, relays will only provide on and off control.
Yeah, that is certainly doable. Good luck with the project.
The Scorpion is a dual motor controller, so you only need one. That’s assuming it is powerful enough for the motors. There are lots of ways to automate the arm and tank. They all have pro’s and con’s. If you can narrow down what you want to do, we can help you know what to get.
